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COLLECTED ESSAYS 



By T. H. HUXLEY 



VOLUME VI 



THOMAS H. HUXLEY'S WORKS. 



Collected Essays. 

Vol. i. Method and Results. 
2. Darwiniana. 

Science and Education. 
Science and Hebrew Tradition. 
Science and Christian Tradition. 

6. Hume. 

7. Ethical and Philosophical Essays. 

8. Man's Place in Nature. 
g. Essays in Science. 

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An Introduction to the Study of Zoology. 
With 82 Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.75. 

Manual of the Anatomy of Vertebrated 

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New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



HUME 



WITH HELPS TO THE STUDY OF 

BERKELEY 



ESSAYS 



BY 

THOMAS H. HUXLEY 



D. AP i COMPANY 

1894 




> 



Authorized Edition, 

Gift from 
the Estate of Miss Ruth Putnam 
Oct,6,l931- 



PREFACE 

In two essays upon the life and work of Descartes, 
which will be found in the first volume of this col- 
lection, I have given some reasons for my conviction 
that he, if any one, has a claim to the title of 
father of modern philosophy. By this I mean that 
his general scheme of things, his conceptions of 
scientific method and of the conditions and limits 
of certainty, are far more essentially and charac- 
teristically modern than those of any of his 
immediate predecessors and successors. Indeed, 
the adepts in some branches of science had not 
fully mastered the import of his ideas so late as 
the beginning of this century. 

The conditions of this remarkable position in 
the world of thought are to be found, as usual, 
primarily, in motherwit, secondarily, in circum- 
stance. Trained by the best educators of the seven- 
teenth century, the Jesuits; naturally endowed 
with a dialectic grasp and subtlety, which even 
they could hardly improve; and with a passion 
for getting at the truth, which even they could 



VI PREFACE 

hardly impair, Descartes possessed, in addition, 
a rare mastery of the art of literary expression. 
If the "Discours de la Methode" had no other 
merits, it would be worth study for the sake of 
the luminous simplicity and sincerity of its style. 

A mathematician of the very first rank, 
Descartes knew all that was to be known of 
mechanical and optical science in his day ; he was 
a skilled and zealous practical anatomist ; he was 
one of the first to recognise the prodigious im- 
portance of the discovery of his contemporary 
Harvey ; and he penetrated more deeply into 
the physiology of the nervous system than any 
specialist in that science, for a century, or more, 
after his time. To this encyclopaedic and yet 
first-hand acquaintance with the nature of things, 
he added an acquaintance with the nature of 
men (which is a much more valuable chapter of 
experience to philosophers than is commonly 
imagined), gathered in the opening campaigns of 
the Thirty Years' War, in wide travels, and amidst 
that brilliant French society in which Pascal was 
his worthy peer. Even a " Traits des Passions," to 
be worth anything, must be based upon observation 
and experiment; and, in this subject, facilities for 
laboratory practice of the most varied and ex- 
tensive character were offered by the Paris of 
Mazarin and the Duchesses ; the Paris, in which 
Descartes' great friend and ally, Father Mersenne, 
reckoned atheists by the thousand ; and, in which, 



PREFACE Vll 

political life touched the lowest depths of degra- 
dation, amidst the chaotic personal intrigues of 
the Fronde. Thus endowed, thus nurtured, thus 
tempered in the fires of experience, it is intelli- 
gible enough that a resolute, clear-headed man, 
haunted from his youth up, as he tells us, with 
an extreme desire to learn how to distinguish 
truth from falsehood, in order to see his way 
clearly and walk surely through life, 1 should have 
early come to the conclusion, that the first thing to 
be done was to cast aside, at any rate temporarily, 
the crutches of traditional, or other, authority ; and 
stand upright on his own feet, trusting to no 
support but that of the solid ground of fact. 

It was in 1619, while meditating in solitary 
winter quarters, that Descartes (being about the 
same age as Hume when he wrote the " Treatise on 
Human Nature ") made that famous resolution, to 
" take nothing for truth without clear knowledge 
that it is such," the great practical effect of which 
is the sanctification of doubt ; the recognition that 
the profession of belief in propositions, of the truth 
of which there is no sufficient evidence, is immoral ; 
the discrowning of authority as such ; the repudi- 
ation of the confusion, beloved of sophists of all 
sorts, between free assent and mere piously gagged 
dissent; and the admission of the obligation to 
reconsider even one's axioms on due demand. 

These, if I mistake not, are the notes of the 

1 Discours de la Mtthode. l e Partie. 



vill PREFACE 

modern, as contrasted with the ancient spirit. 
It is true that the isolated greatness of Socrates 
was founded on intellectual and moral character- 
istics of the same order. He also persisted in 
demanding that no man should "take anything 
for truth without a clear knowledge that it is 
such," and so constantly and systematically shocked 
authority and shook traditional security, that the 
fact of his being allowed to live for seventy years, 
if one comes to think of it, is evidence of the 
patient and tolerant disposition of his Athenian 
compatriots, which should obliterate the memory of 
the final hemlock. That which it may be well for 
us not to forget is, that the first-recorded judicial 
murder of a scientific thinker was compassed and 
effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was 
brought about by eloquent demagogues, to whom, 
of all men, thorough searchings of the intellect 
are most dangerous and therefore most hateful. 

The first agnostic, the man who, so far as 
the records of history go, was the first to see that 
clear knowledge of what one does not know 
is just as important as knowing what one does 
know, had no true disciples ; and the greatest of 
those who listened to him, if he preserved the 
fame of his master for all time, did his best to 
counteract the impulse towards intellectual clear- 
ness which Socrates gave. The Platonic philo- 
sophy is probably the grandest example of the 
unscientific use of the imagination extant ; and it 



PREFACE IX 

would be hard to estimate the amount of detri- 
ment to clear thinking effected, directly and in- 
directly, by the theory of ideas, on the one hand, 
and by the unfortunate doctrine of the baseness of 
matter, on the other. 

Ancient thought, so far as it is positive, fails on 
account of its neglect to criticise its assumptions ; 
so far as it is negative, it fails, because it forgets 
that proof of the inconsistencies of the. terms in 
which we symbolise things has nothing to do with 
the cogency of the logic of facts. The negations 
of Pyrrhonism are as shallow, as the assumptions 
of Platonism are empty. Modern thought has by 
no means escaped from perversions of the same 
order. But, thanks to the sharp discipline of 
physical science, it is more and more freeing itself 
from them. In face of the incessant verification 
of deductive reasoning by experiment, Pyrrhonism 
has become ridiculous ; in face of the ignominious 
fate which always befalls those who attempt to get 
at the secrets of nature, or the rules of conduct, 
by the high a priori road, Platonism and its 
modern progeny show themselves to be, at best, 
splendid follies. 

The development of exact natural knowledge 
in all its vast range, from physics to history and 
criticism, is the consequence of the working out, 
in this province, of the resolution to " take nothing 
for truth without clear knowledge that it is such ; " 
to consider all beliefs open to criticism ; to regard 



X PKEFACE 

the value of authority as neither greater nor less, 
than as much as it can prove itself to be worth. 
The modern spirit is not the spirit " which always 
denies/' delighting only in destruction ; still less is 
it that which builds castles in the air rather than 
not construct ; it is that spirit which works and 
will work "without haste and without rest/' 
gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its 
barns and devouring error with unquenchable 
fire. 

In the reform of philosophy, since Descartes, I 
think that the greatest and the most fruitful re- 
sults of the activity of the modern spirit — it may 
be, the only great and lasting results — are those 
first presented in the works of Berkeley and of 
Hume. 

The one carried out to its logical result the 
Cartesian principle, that absolute certainty at- 
taches only to the knowledge of facts of conscious- 
ness ; the other, extended the Cartesian criticism 
to the whole range of propositions commonly 
" taken for truth ; " proved that, in a multitude of 
important instances, so far from possessing " clear 
knowledge ,: that they may be so taken, we have 
none at all; and that our duty therefore is to 
remain silent; or to express, at most, suspended 
judgment. 

My earliest lesson on this topic was received 
from Hume's keen-witted countryman Hamilton; 



PREFACE xi 

afterwards I learned it, more fully, from the foun- 
tain head, the " Discours de la Methode " ; then 
from Berkeley and from Hume themselves. So 
that when, in 1878, my friend Mr. John Morley 
asked me to write an account of Hume for the 
"English Men of Letters" series, I thought I 
might undertake the business, without too much 
presumption ; also, with some hope of passing on 
to others the benefits which I had received from 
the study of Hume's works. And, however imperfect 
the attempt may be, I have reason to believe 
that it has fulfilled its purpose. I hoped, at one 
time, to be able to add an analogous exposi- 
tion of Berkeley's views ; and, indeed, undertook 
to supply it. But the burdens and distractions 
of a busy life led to the postponement of this, 
as of many other projects, till too late. My state- 
ment of Hume's philosophy will have to be 
provided with its counterpart and antithesis by 
other hands. But I have appended to the " Hume " 
a couple of preliminary studies, which may be of 
use to students of Berkeley. 

One word, by way of parting advice to the rising 
generation of English readers. If it is your 
desire to discourse fluently and learnedly about 
philosophical questions, begin with the Ionians and 
work steadily through to the latest new specula- 
tive treatise. If you have a good memory and a 
fair knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, and 



Xll PREFACE 

German, three or four years spent in this way 
should enable you to attain your object. 

If, on the contrary, you are animated by the 
much rarer desire for real knowledge; if you 
want to get a clear conception of the deepest 
problems set before the intellect of man, there is no 
need, so far as I can see, for you to go beyond the 
limits of the English tongue. Indeed, if you are 
pressed for time, three English authors will suffice ; 
namely, Berkeley, Hume, and Hobbes. 

If you will lay your minds alongside the works of 
these great writers — not with the view of merely 
ascertaining their opinions, still less for the 
purpose of indolently resting on their authority, 
but to the end of seeing for yourselves how far 
what each says has its foundation in right 
reason — you will have had as much sound philo- 
sophical training as is good for any one but an 
expert. And you will have had the further advan- 
tage of becoming familiar with the manner in 
which three of the greatest masters of the English 
language have handled that noble instrument of 
thought. 

T. H. Huxley. 



Hodeslea, Eastbourne, 
January ', 1894. 



CONTENTS 

HUME 

PART L— HUME'S LIFE. 
I 

PAOX 
EARLY LIFE I LITERARY AND POLITICAL WRITINGS . . 3 

II 

LATER YEARS: THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND 30 



PART IL— HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 



THE OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 57 

II 

THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 72 



XIV CONTENTS 

PAGE 
III 

THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 88 



IV 

THE CLASSIFICATION AND THE NOMENCLATURE OF 

MENTAL OPERATIONS 104 



V 

THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 121 



VI 



LANGUAGE — PROPOSITIONS CONCERNING NECESSARY 

TRUTHS 134 



VII 

THE ORDER OF NATURE : MIRACLES . 125 

VIII 
THEISM ; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 165 

IX 

THE SOUL: THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 192 



CONTENTS XV 

PAGE 

X 

VOLITION : LIBERTY AND NECESSITY ......... 212 

XI 

THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS . . . . . , . 228 



HELPS TO THE STUDY OF BERKELEY 

BISHOP BERKELEY' ON THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

(1871) 243 



ON SENSATION AND THE UNITY OF STRUCTURE OF 

SENSIFEROUS ORGANS (1879) . . 288 



V f 



_• 



PAET I 



HUME'S LIFE 



144 



HUME 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY LIFE: LITERARY AND POLITICAL 

WRITINGS 

David Hume was born in Edinburgh on the 26th 
of April (O.S.), 1711. His parents were then 
residing in the parish of the Tron church, 
apparently on a visit to the Scottish capital, as 
the small estate which his father, Joseph Hume, 
or Home, inherited, lay in Berwickshire, on the 
banks of the Whitadder or Whitewater, a few 
miles from the border, and within sight of English 
ground. The paternal mansion was little more 
than a very modest farmhouse, 1 and the property 
derived its name of Nine wells from a considerable 

1 A picture of the house, taken from Drummond's History of 
Noble British Families, is to be seen in Chambers's Book of Days 
(April 26th) ; and if, as Drummond says, ' * It is a favourable 
specimen of the best Scotch lairds' houses," all that can be said 
is that the worst Scotch lairds must have been poorly lodged 
indeed. 



4 HUME I 

spring, winch breaks out on the slope in front of 
the house, and falls into the Whitadder. 

Both mother and father came of good Scottish 
families — the paternal line running back to Lord 
Home of Douglas, who went over to France with 
the Douglas during the French wars of Henry V. 
and VI. and was killed at the battle of Verneuil. 
Joseph Hume died when David was an infant, 
leaving himself and two elder children, a brother 
and a sister, to the care of their mother, who is 
described by David Hume in " My Own Life " as 
" a woman of singular merit, who though young 
and handsome devoted herself entirely to the 
rearing and education of her children." Mr. 
Burton says : " Her portrait, which I have seen, 
represents a thin but pleasing countenance, ex- 
pressive of great intellectual acuteness ; " and as 
Hume told Dr. Black that she had " precisely the 
same constitution with himself" and died of the 
disorder which proved fatal to him, it is probable 
that the qualities inherited from his mother had 
much to do with the future philosophers eminence. 
It is curious, however, that her estimate of her 
son in her only recorded, and perhaps slightly 
apocryphal utterance, is of a somewhat unexpected 
character. "Our Davie's a fine good-natured 
crater, but uncommon wake-minded." The first 
part of the judgment was indeed verified by 
" Davie's " whole life ; but one might seek in vain 
for signs of what is commonly understood as 



I EARLY LIFE 5 

" weakness of mind ' in a man who not only 
showed himself to be an intellectual athlete, but 
who had an eminent share of practical wisdom 
and tenacity of purpose. One would like to know, 
however, when it was that Mrs. Hume committed 
herself to this not too flattering judgment of her 
younger son. For as Hume reached the mature 
age of four and thirty, before he obtained any 
employment of sufficient importance to convert 
the meagre pittance of a middling laird's younger 
brother into a decent maintenance, it is not im- 
probable that a shrewd Scots wife may have 
thought his devotion to philosophy and poverty to 
be due to mere infirmity of purpose. But she 
lived till 1749, long enough to see more than the 
dawn of her son's literary fame and official im- 
portance, and probably changed her mind about 
" Davie's " force of character. 

David Hume appears to have owed little to 
schools or universities. There is some evidence 
that he entered the Greek class in the University 
of Edinburgh in 1723 — when he was a boy of 
twelve years of age — but it is not known how long 
his studies were continued, and he did not gradu- 
ate. In 1727, at any rate, he was living at 
Ninewells, and already possessed by that love of 
learning and thirst for literary fame, which, as 
" My Own Life " tells us, was the ruling passion 
of his life and the chief source of his enjoyments. 
A letter of this date, addressed to his friend 



6 HUME I 

Michael Ramsay, is certainly a most singular 
production for a boy of sixteen. After sundry 
quotations from Virgil the letter proceeds : — 

"The perfectly wise man that outbraves fortune, is much 
greater than the husbandman who slips by her ; and, indeed, 
this pastoral and saturnian happiness I have in a great measure 
come at just now. I live like a king, pretty much by myself, 
neither full of action nor perturbation — molles somnos. This 
state, however, I can foresee is not to be relied on. My peace 
of mind is not sufficiently confirmed by philosophy to with- 
stand the blows of fortune. This greatness and elevation of 
soul is to be found only in study and contemplation. This 
alone can teach us to look down on human accidents. You 
must allow [me] to talk thus like a philosopher : 'tis a subject 
I think much on, and could talk all day long of." 

If David talked in this strain to his mother her 
tongue probably gave utterance to " Bless the 
bairn ! " and, in her private soul, the epithet 
" wake-minded ' may then have recorded itself. 
But, though few lonely, thoughtful, studious boys 
of sixteen give vent to their thoughts in such 
stately periods, it is probable that the brooding 
over an ideal is commoner at this age, than fathers 
and mothers, busy with the cares of practical life, 
are apt to imagine. 

About a year later, Hume's family tried to 
launch him into the profession of the law ; but, as 
he tells us, " while they fancied I was poring upon 
Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the 
authors which I was secretly devouring," and the 
attempt seems to have come to an abrupt termin- 



I EAELY LIFE 7 

ation. Nevertheless, as a very competent author- 
ity 1 wisely remarks : — 

" There appear to have been in Hume all the elements of 
which a good lawyer is made : clearness of judgment, power of 
rapidly acquiring knowledge, untiring industry, and dialectic 
skill : and if his mind had not been preoccupied, he might have 
fallen into the gulf in which many of the world's greatest 
geniuses lie buried — professional eminence ; and might have 
left behind him a reputation limited to the traditional recollec- 
tions of the Parliament house, or associated with important 
decisions. He was through life an able, clear-headed man of 
business, and I have seen several legal documents written in 
his own hand and evidently drawn by himself. They stand 
the test of general professional observation ; and their writer, 
by preparing documents of facts of such a character on his own 
responsibility, showed that he had considerable confidence in 
his ability to adhere to the forms adequate for the occasion. 
He talked of it as ' an ancient prejudice industriously propagated 
by the dunces in all countries, that a man of genius is unfit for 
biosiness,' and he showed, in his general conduct through life, 
that he did not choose to come voluntarily under this proscrip- 
tion." 

Six years longer Hume remained at Ninewells 
before he made another attempt to embark in a 
practical career — this time commerce — and with a 
like result. For a few months' trial proved that 
kind of life, also, to be hopelessly against the 
grain. 

It was while in London, on his way to Bristol, 
where he proposed to commence his mercantile 

1 Mr. John Hill Burton, in his valuable Life of TTume, on 
which, I need hardly say, I have drawn freely for the materials 
of the present biographical sketch. 



8 HUME I 

life, that Hume addressed to some eminent 
London physician (probably, as Mr. Burton 
suggests, Dr. George Cheyne) a remarkable letter. 
Whether it was ever sent seems doubtful ; but it 
shows that philosophers as well as poets have 
their Werterian crises, and it presents an interest- 
ing parallel to John Stuart Mill's record of the 
corresponding period of his youth. The letter is 
too long to be given in full, but a few quotations 
may suffice to indicate its importance to those who 
desire to comprehend the man. 

"You must know then that from my earliest infancy I found 
always a strong inclination to books and letters. As our 
college education in Scotland, extending little further than the 
languages, ends commonly when we are about fourteen or 
fifteen years of age, I was after that left to my own choice 
in my reading, and found it incline me almost equally to books 
of reasoning and philosophy, and to poetry and the polite 
authors. Every one who is acquainted either with the 
philosophers or critics, knows that there is nothing yet estab- 
lished in either of these two sciences, and that they contain 
little more than endless disputes, even in the most fundamental 
articles. Upon examination of these, I found a certain boldness 
of temper growing on me, which was not inclined to submit to 
any authority in these subjects, but led me to seek out some 
new medium, by which truth might be established. After 
much study and reflection on this, at last, when I was about 
eighteen years of age, there seemed to be opened up to me 
a new scene of thought, which transported me beyond measure, 
and made me, with an ardour natural to young men, throw up 
every other pleasure or business to apply entirely to it. The 
law, which was the business I designed to follow, appeared 
nauseous to me, and I could think of no other way of pushing 
my fortune in the world, but that of a scholar and philosopher. 



I EARLY LIFE 9 

I was infinitely happy in this course of life for some months ; 
till at last, about the beginning of September, 1729, all my 
ardour seemed in a moment to be extinguished, and I could no 
longer raise my mind to that pitch, which formerly gave me 
such excessive pleasure." 

This " decline of soul " Hume attributes, in part, 
to his being smitten with the beautiful represen- 
tation of virtue in the works of Cicero, Seneca, 
and Plutarch, and being thereby led to discipline 
his temper and his will along with his reason and 
understandings 

o 

"I was continually fortifying myself with reflections against 
death, and poverty, and shame, and pain, and all the other 
calamities of life." 

And he adds very characteristically : — 

"These no doubt are exceeding useful when joined with an 
active life, because the occasion being presented along with 
the reflection, works it into the soul, and makes it take a deep 
impression : but, in solitude, they serve to little other pur- 
pose than to waste the spirits, the force of the mind meeting no 
resistance, but wasting itself in the air, like our arm when it 
misses its aim." 

Along with all this mental perturbation, symp- 
toms of scurvy, a disease now almost unknown 
among landsmen, but which, in the days of winter 
salt meat, before root crops flourished in the 
Lothians, greatly plagued our forefathers, made 
their appearance/ And, indeed, it may be 
suspected that physical conditions were, at first, 
at the bottom of the whole business ; for, in 1731, 
a ravenous appetite set in and, in six weeks from 



10 HUME I 

being tall, lean, and raw-boned, Hume says he 
became sturdy and robust, with a ruddy com- 
plexion and a cheerful countenance — eating, 
sleeping, and feeling well, except that the capacity 
for intense mental application seemed to be gone. 
He, therefore, determined to seek out a more 
active life ; and, though he could not and would 
not " quit his pretensions to learning, but with his 
last breath," he resolved "to lay them aside for 
some time, in order the more effectually to resume 
them." 

The careers open to a poor Scottish gentleman 
in those days were very few; and, as Hume's 
option lay between a travelling tutorship and a 
stool in a merchant's office, he chose the latter. 

"And having got recommendation to a considerable trader 
in Bristol, I am just now hastening thither, with a resolution 
to forget myself, and everything that is past, to engage myself, 
as far as is possible, in that course of life, and to toss about 
the world from one pole to the other, till I leave this distemper 
behind me." 1 

But it was all of no use — Nature would have 
her way — and in the middle of 1736, David 
Hume, aged twenty-three, without a profession or 
any assured means of earning a guinea; and 
having doubtless, by his apparent vacillation, but 
real tenacity of purpose, once more earned the 

1 One cannot but be reminded of young Descartes' renunciation 
of study for soldiering. 



I EARLY LIFE 11 

title of " wake-minded " at home ; betook himself 
to a foreign country. 

" I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my 
studies in a country retreat : and there I laid that plan of life 
which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to 
make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, 
to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every 
object as contemptible except the improvement of my talents 
in literature." 1 

Hume passed through Paris on his way to 
Rbeims, where he resided for some time ; though 
the greater part of his three years' stay was spent 
at La Fleche, in frequent intercourse with the 
Jesuits of the famous college in which Descartes 
was educated. Here he composed his first work, 
the "Treatise of Human Nature"; though it 
would appear from the following passage in the 
letter to Cheyne, that he had been accumulating 
materials to that end for some years before he left 
Scotland. 

"I found that the moral philosophy transmitted to us by 
antiquity laboured under the same inconvenience that has been 
found in their natural philosophy, of being entirely hypotheti- 
cal, and depending more upon invention than experience : 
every one consulted his fancy in erecting schemes of virtue and 
happiness, without regarding human nature, upon which every 
moral conclusion must depend." 

This is the key-note of the " Treatise " ; of 
which Hume himself says apologetically, in one of 
his letters, that it was planned before he was 

1 My Own Life. 



12 - HUME I 

twenty-one and composed before he had reached 
the age of twenty-five. 1 

Under these circumstances, it is probably the 
most remarkable philosophical work, both intrin- 
sically and in its effects upon the course of 
thought, that has ever been written. Berkeley, 
indeed, published the "Essay Towards a New 
Theory of Vision," the " Treatise Concerning the 
Principles of Human Knowledge," and the " Three 
Dialogues," between the ages of twenty-four and 
twenty-eight ; and thus comes very near to Hume, 
both in precocity and in influence ; but his inves- 
tigations are more limited in their scope than 
those of his Scottish contemporary. 

The first and second volumes of the " Treatise," 
containing Book I., " Of the Understanding," and 
Book II., " Of the Passions," were published in 
January, 1739. The publisher gave fifty pounds 
for the copyright ; which is probably more than 
an unknown writer of twenty-seven years of age 
would get for a similar work, at the present time. 
But, in other respects, its success fell far short of 
Hume's expectations. In a letter dated the 1st of 
June, 1739, he writes, — 

" I am not much in the humour of such compositions at 
present, having received news from London of the success of 



1 Letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, 1751. " So vast an 
undertaking, planned before I was one-and-twenty, and com- 
posed before twenty-five, must necessarily be very defective, 
have repented my haste a hundred and a hundred times. 



I EARLY LIFE 13 

my ' Philosophy, ' which is but indifferent, if I may judge by 
the sale of the book, and if I may believe my bookseller." 

This, however, indicates a very different recep- 
tion from that which Hume, looking through the 
inverted telescope of old age, ascribes to the 
" Treatise " in " My Own Life/' 

"Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my 
* Treatise of Human Nature.' It fell deadbonn from the press 
without reaching such a distinction as even to excite a murmur 
among the zealots." 

As a matter of fact, it was fully, and, on the 
whole, respectfully and appreciatively, reviewed in 
the " History of the Works of the Learned " for 
November, 1739. 1 Whoever the reviewer may 
have been, he was a man of discernment, for he 
says that the work bears " incontestable marks of 
a great capacity, of a soaring genius, but young, 
and not yet thoroughly practised ; * and he adds, 
that we shall probably have reason to consider 
" this, compared with the later productions, in the 
same light as we view the juvenile works of a 
Milton, or the first manner of a Raphael or other 
celebrated painter/' In a letter to Hutcheson, 
Hume merely speaks of this article as " somewhat 
abusive;' so that his vanity, being young and 
callow, seems to have been correspondingly wide- 
mouthed and hard to satiate. 

1 Burton, Life, vol. i. p. 109. 



14 HUME 1 

It must be confessed that, on this occasion, no 
less than on that of his other publications, Hume 
exhibits no small share of the craving after mere 
notoriety and vulgar success, as distinct from the 
pardonable, if not honourable, ambition for solid 
and enduring fame, which would have harmonised 
better with his philosophy. Indeed, it appears to 
be by no means improbable that this peculiarity 
of Hume's moral constitution was the cause of his 
gradually forsaking philosophical studies, after the 
publication of the third part (" On Morals ") of the 
" Treatise," in 1740, and turning to those political 
and historical topics which were likely to yield, 
and did in fact yield, a much better return of that 
sort of success which his soul loved. The 
" Philosophical Essays Concerning the Human 
Understanding," which afterwards became the 
" Inquiry," is not much more than an abridgment 
and recast, for popular* use, of parts of the 
" Treatise," with the addition of the essays on 
" Miracles " and on " Necessity." In style, it exhibits 
a great improvement on the " Treatise " ; but the 
substance, if not deteriorated, is certainly not 
improved. Hume does not really bring his ma- 
ture powers to bear upon his early speculations, 
in the later work. The crude fruits have not 
been ripened, but they have been ruthlessly 
pruned away, along with the branches which bore 
them. The result is a pretty shrub enough ; but 
not the tree of knowledge, with its roots firmly 



I EARLY LIFE 15 

fixed in fact, its branches perennially budding 
forth into new truths, which Hume might have 
reared. Perhaps, after all, worthy Mrs. Hume 
was, in the highest sense, right. Davie was 
" wake-minded," not to see that the world of 
philosophy was his to overrun and subdue, if he 
would but persevere in the work he had begun. 
But no — he must needs turn aside for " success " : 
and verily he had his reward ; but not the crown 
he might have won. 

In 1740, Hume seems to have made an 
acquaintance which rapidly ripened into a life-long 
friendship. Adam Smith was, at that time, a boy 
student of seventeen at the University of Glasgow ; 
and Hume sends a copy of the "Treatise" to 
" Mr. Smith," apparently on the recommendation 
of the well-known Hutcheson, Professor of Moral 
Philosophy in the university. It is a remarkable 
evidence of Adam Smith's early intellectual 
development, that a youth of his age should be 
thought worthy of such a present. 

In 1741 Hume published anonymously, at 
Edinburgh, the first volume of " Essays Moral and 
Political," which was followed in 1742 by the 
second volume. 

These pieces are written in an admirable style, 
and, though arranged without apparent method, a 
system of political philosophy may be gathered 
from their contents. Thus the third essay, " That 
Politics may be reduced to a Science," defends 



*m 



I 



16 HUME I 

that thesis, and dwells on the importance of forms 
of government. 

"So great is the force of laws and of particular forms of 
government, and so little dependence have they on the 
humours and tempers of men, that consequences almost as 
general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them as 
any which the mathematical sciences afford us." — (III. 15.) 
(See p. 45.) 

Hume proceeds to exemplify the evils which 
inevitably flow from universal suffrage, from 
aristocratic privilege, and from elective monarchy, 
by historical examples, and concludes : — 

"That an hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and 
a people voting by their representatives, form the best 
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy." — (III. 18.) 

If we reflect that the following passage of the 
same essay was written nearly a century and a half 
ago, it would seem that whatever other changes 
may have taken place, political warfare remains 
in statu qtco : — 

" Those who either attack or defend a minister in such a 
government as ours, where the utmost liberty is allowed, always 
carry matters to an extreme, and exaggerate his merit or de- 
merit with regard to the public. His enemies are sure to 
charge him with the greatest enormities, both in domestic and 
foreign management ; and there is no meanness or crime, of 
which, in their judgment, he is not capable. Unnecessary 
wars, scandalous treaties, profusion of public treasure, oppres- 
sive taxes, every kind of maladministration is ascribed to him. 
To aggravate the charge, his pernicious conduct, it is said, will 
extend its baneful influence even to posterity, by undermining 



I EARLY LIFE 17 

the best constitution in the world, and disordering that wise 
system of laws, institutions, and customs, by which our 
ancestors, during so many centuries, have been so happily 
governed. He is not only a wicked minister in himself, but 
has removed every security provided against wicked ministers 
for the future. 

"On the other hand, the partisans of the minister make his 
panegyric rise as high as the accusation against him, and 
celebrate his wise, steady, and moderate conduct in every part 
of his administration. The honour and interest of the nation 
supported abroad, public credit maintained at home, persecution 
restrained, faction subdued : the merit of all these blessings is 
ascribed solely to the minister. At the same time, he crowns 
all his other merits by a religious care of the best government 
in the world, which he has preserved in all its parts, and has 
transmitted entire, to be the happiness and security of the 
latest posterity."— (III. 26.) 

Hume sagely remarks that the panegyric and 
the accusation cannot both be true ; and, that what 
truth there may be in either, rather tends to show 
that our much-vaunted constitution does not fulfil 
its chief object, which is to provide a remedy 
against maladministration. And if it does not — 

o 

"we are rather beholden to any minister who undermines it 
and affords us the opportunity of erecting a better in its 
place."— (III. 28.) 

The fifth Essay discusses the " Origin of 
Government " : — 

"Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society 
from necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit. The 
same creature, in his farther progress, is engaged to establish 
political society, in order to administer justice, without which 
there can be no peace among them, nor safety, nor mutual 

145 






18 HUME I 

intercourse. We are therefore to look upon all the vast 
apparatus of our government, as having ultimately no other 
object or purpose but the distribution of justice, or, in other 
words, the support of the twelve judges. Kings and parlia- 
ments, fleets and armies, officers of the court and revenue, am- 
bassadors, ministers and privy councillors, are all subordinate 
in the end to this part of administration. Even the clergy, as 
their duty leads them to inculcate morality, may justly be 
thought, so far as regards this world, to have no other useful 
object of their institution." — (III. 37.) 

The police theory of government has never been 
stated more tersely : and, if there were only one 
state in the world ; and if we could be certain by 
intuition, or by the aid of revelation, that it is 
wrong for society, as a corporate body, to do 
anything for the improvement of its members and, 
thereby, indirectly support the twelve judges, no 
objection could be raised to it. 

Unfortunately the existence of rival or inimical 
nations furnishes " kings and parliaments, fleets 
and armies," with a good deal of occupation 
beyond the support of the twelve judges ; and, 
though the proposition that the State has no 
business to meddle with anything but the ad- 
ministration of justice, seems sometimes to be 
regarded as an axiom, it can hardly be said to 
be intuitively certain, inasmuch as a great many 
people absolutely repudiate it ; while, as yet, the 
attempt to give it the authority of a revelation 
has not been made. 

As Hume says with profound truth in the 



I EARLY LIFE 19 

fourth Essay, " On the First Principles of Govern- 
ment " : — 

"As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors 
have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, 
on opinion only that government is founded ; and this maxim 
extends to the most despotic and most military governments, 
as well as to the most free and the most popular." — (III. 31.) 

But if the whole fabric of social organisation 
rests on opinion, it may surely be fairly argued 
that, in the interests of self-preservation, if for no 
better reason, society has a right to see that the 
means of forming just opinions are placed within 
the reach of every one of its members ; and, there- 
fore, that due provision for education, at any rate, 
is a right and, indeed, a duty, of the state. 

The three opinions upon whichj^l government, 
or the authority of the few oferme many, is 
founded, says Hume, are public inilpst, right to 
power, and right to property. No government 
can permanently exist, unless the majority of the 
citizens, who are the ultimate depositary of Force, 
are convinced that it serves the general interest, 
that it has lawful authority, and that it respects 
individual rights : — 

"A government may endure for several ages, though the 
balance of power and the balance of property do not coincide 
.... But where the original constitution allows any share of 
power, though small, to an order of men who possess a large 
share of property, it is easy for them gradually to stretch their 
authority, and bring the balance of power to coincide with that 
of property. This has been the case with the House of 
Commons in England." — (III. 34.) 



20 HUME I 

Hume then points out that, in his time, the 
authority of the Commons was by no means 
eciivalent to the property and power it repre- 
se ted, and proceeds : — 

Were the members obliged to receive instructions from their 
constituents, like the Dutch deputies, this would entirely alter 
the case ; and if such immense power and riches as those of all 
the Commons of Great Britain, were brought into the scale, 
it is not easy to conceive that the crown could either influence 
that multitude of people, or withstand that balance of property. 
It is true, the crown has great influence over the collective 
body in the elections of members ; but were this influence, 
which at present is only exerted once in seven years, to be 
employed in bringing over the people to every vote, it would 
soon be wasted, and no skill, popularity, or revenue could 
support it. I must, therefore, be of opinion that an alteration 
in this particular would introduce a total alteration in our 
government, would soon reduce it to a pure republic ; and, 
perhaps, to a republic of no inconvenient form." — (III. 35.) 

Viewed by the light of subsequent events, this 
is surely a very remarkable example of political 
sagacity. The members of the House of Commons 
are not yet delegates ; but, with the widening of, 
the suffrage and the rapidly increasing tendency 
to drill and organise the electorate, and to exact 
definite pledges from candidates, they are rapidly 
becoming, if not delegates, at least attorneys for 
committees of electors. The same causes are con- 
stantly tending to exclude men, who combine a 
keen sense of self-respect with large intellectual 
capacity, from a position in which the one is as 
constantly offended, as the other is neutralised, 



I EARLY LIFE 21 

Notwithstanding the attempt of George the Third 
to resuscitate the royal authority, Hume's fore- 
sight has been so completely justified that no ne 
now dreams of the crown exerting the sligh mt 
influence upon elections. 

In the seventh Essay, Hume raises a very inter- 
esting discussion as to the probable ultimate 
result of the forces which were at work in the 
British Constitution in the first part of the 
eighteenth century : — 

" There has been a sudden and sensible change in the 
opinions of men, within these last fifty years, by the progress 
of learning and of liberty. Most people in this island have 
divested themselves of all superstitious reverence to nana.es 
and authority ; the clergy have much lost their credit ; their 
pretensions and doctrines have been much ridiculed ; and even 
religion can scarcely support itself in the world. The mere 
name of king commands little respect ; and to talk of a king 
as God's vicegerent on earth, or to give him any of those 
magnificent titles which formerly dazzled mankind, would but 
excite laughter in every one." — (III. 54.) 

In fact, at the present day, the danger to mon- 
archy in Britain would appear to lie, not in 
increasing love for equality, for which, except 
as regards the law, Englishmen have never 
cared, but rather entertain an aversion; nor in 
any abstract democratic theories, upon which the 
mass of Englishmen pour the contempt with 
which they view theories in general ; but in the 
constantly increasing tendency of monarchy to 
become slightly absurd, from the ever- widening 



22 HUME I 

discrepancy between modern political ideas and 
the theory of kingship. As Hume observes, 
even in his time, people had left off making 
believe that a king was a different species of man 
from other men ; and, since his day, more and 
more such make-believes have become impossible ; 
until the maintenance of kingship in coming 
generations seems likely to depend, entirely, upon 
whether it is the general opinion, that a hereditary 
president of our virtual republic will serve the 
general interest better than an elective one or 
not. The tendency of public feeling in this 
direction is patent, but it does not follow that 
a republic is to be the final stage of our govern- 
ment. In fact. Hume thinks not : — 

" It is well known, that every government must come to a 
period, and that death is unavoidable to the political, as well 
as to the animal body. But, as one kind of death may be 
preferable to another, it may be inquired, whether it be more 
desirable for the British constitution to terminate in a popular 
government, or in an absolute monarchy ? Here, I would 
frankly declare, that though liberty be preferable to slavery, in 
almost every case ; yet I should rather wish to see an absolute 
monarch than a republic in this island. For let us consider 
what kind of republic we have reason to expect. The question 
is not concerning any fine imaginary republic of which a man 
forms a plan in his closet. There is no doubt but a popular 
government may be imagined more perfect than an absolute 
monarchy, or even than our present constitution. But what 
reason have we to expect that any such government will ever be 
established in Great Britain, upon the dissolution of our 
monarchy ? If any single person acquire power enough to take 
our constitution to pieces, and put it up anew, he is really 



1 EARLY LIFE 23 

an absolute monarch ; and we have already had an instance of 
this kind, sufficient to convince us, that such a person will 
never resign his power, or establish any free government. 
Matters, therefore, must be trusted to their natural progress 
and operation ; and the House of Commons, according to its 
present constitution, must be the only legislature in such a 
popular government. The inconveniences attending such a 
situation of affairs present themselves by thousands. If the 
House of Commons, in such a case, ever dissolve itself, which 
is not to be expected, we may look for a civil war every 
election. If it continue itself, we shall suffer all the tyranny 
of a faction subdivided into new factions. And, as such a 
violent government cannot long subsist, we shall at last, after 
many convulsions and civil wars, find repose in absolute 
monarchy, which it would have been happier for us to have 
established peaceably from the beginning. Absolute monarchy, 
therefore, is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the 
British constitution. 

" Thus if we have more reason to be jealous of monarchy, 
because the danger is more imminent from that quarter ; we 
have also reason to be more jealous of popular government, be- 
cause that danger is more terrible. This may teach us a lesson 
of moderation in all our political controversies." — (III. 55). 

One may admire the sagacity of these specula- 
tions, and the force and clearness with which they 
are expressed, without altogether agreeing with 
them. That an analogy between the social and 
bodily organism exists, and is, in many respects, 
clear and full of instructive suggestion, is undeni- 
able. Yet a state answers, not to an indivi 
but to a generic type ; and there is no reason, in 
the nature of things, why any generic type should 
die out. The type of the pearly Nautilus, highly 
organised as it is, has persisted with but little 



•-.><.. 



^ 



24 HUME I 

change from the Silurian epoch till now ; and, so 
long as terrestrial conditions remain approxi- 
mately similar to what they are at present, there 
is no more reason why it should cease to exist in 
the next, than in the past, hundred million years 
or so. The true ground for doubting the possi- 
bility of the establishment of absolute monarchy 
in Britain is, that opinion seems to have passed 
through, and left far behind, the stage at which 
such a change would be possible ; and the true 
reason for doubting the permanency of a republic, 
if it is ever established, lies in the fact, that a 
republic requires for its maintenance a far higher 
standard of morality and of intelligence in the 
members of the state than any other form of 
government. Samuel gave the Israelites a king 
because they were not righteous enough to do 
without one, with a pretty plain warning of what 
they were to expect from the gift. And, up to 
this time, the progress of such republics as have 
been established in the world has not been such, 
as to lead to any confident expectation that their 
foundation is laid on a sufficiently secure subsoil 
of public spirit, morality, and intelligence. On 
the contrary, they exhibit examples of personal 
corruption and of political profligacy as fine as any 
hotbed of despotism has ever produced ; while 
they fail in the primary duty of the administra- 
tion of justice, as none but an effete despotism 
has ever failed. 



I EAELY LIFE 25 

Hume has been accused of departing, in his old 
age, from the liberal principles of his youth ; and, 
no doubt, he was careful, in the later editions of 
the " Essays," to expunge everything that savoured 
of democratic tendencies. But the passage just 
quoted shows that this was no recantation, but 
simply a confirmation, by his experience of one of 
the most debased periods of English history, of 
those evil tendencies attendant on popular govern- 
ment, of which, from the first, he was fully aware. 

In the ninth essay, " On the Parties of Great 
Britain/' there occurs a passage which, while it 
affords evidence of the marvellous change which 
has taken place in the social condition of Scotland 
since 1741, contains an assertion respecting the 
state of the Jacobite party at that time, which at 
first seems surprising : — 

" As violent things have not commonly so long a duration as 
moderate, we actually find that the Jacobite party is almost 
entirely vanished from among us, and that the distinction of 
Court and Country, which is but creeping in at London, is the 
only one that is ever mentioned in this kingdom. Beside the 
violence and openness of the Jacobite party, another reason has 
perhaps contributed to produce so sudden and so visible an 
alteration in this part of Britain. There are only two ranks of 
men among us ; gentlemen who have some fortune and educa- 
tion, and the meanest slaving poor ; without any considerable 
number of that middling rank of men, which abound more 
in England, both in cities and in the country, than in any other 
part of the world. The slaving poor are incapable of any 
principles ; gentlemen may be converted to true principles, 
by time and experience. The middling rank of men have 
curiosity and knowledge enough to form principles, but not 



26 HUME I 

enough to form true ones, or correct any prejudices that they 
may have imbibed. And it is among the middling rank of 
people that Tory principles do at present prevail most in 
England."— (III. 80, note.) 

Considering that the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 
broke out only four years after this essay was 
published, the assertion that the Jacobite party 
had "almost entirely vanished in 1741 " sounds 
strange enough : and the passage which contains 
it is omitted in the third edition of the " Essays," 
published in 1748. Nevertheless, Hume was 
probably right, as the outbreak of '45 was little 
better than a Highland raid, and the Pretender 
obtained no important following in the Lowlands. 

No less curious, in comparison with what would 
be said nowadays, is Hume's remark in the essay 
on the " Rise of the Arts and Sciences " that — 

"The English are become sensible of the scandalous Keen- 
tiousness of their stage from the example of the French decency 
and morals." — (III. 135.) 

And it is perhaps as surprising to be told, by a 
man of Hume's literary power, that the first polite 
prose in the English language was written by 
Swift. Locke and Temple (with whom Sprat is 
astoundingly conjoined) "knew too little of the 
rules of art to be esteemed elegant writers/' and 
the prose of Bacon, Harrington, and Milton is 
" altogether stiff and pedantic." Hobbes, who 
whether he should be called a " polite " writer or 



I EARLY LIFE 27 

not, is a master of vigorous English ; Clarendon, 
Addison, and Steele (the last two, surely, were 
" polite " writers in all conscience) are not men- 
tioned. 

On the subject of " National Character," about 
which more nonsense, and often very mischievous 
nonsense, has been and is talked than upon any 
other topic, Hume's observations are full of sense 
and shrewdness. He distinguishes between the 
moral and the physical causes of national character, 
enumerating under the former— 

" The nature of the government, the revolutions of public 
affairs, the plenty or penury in which people live, the situation 
of the nation with regard to its neighbours, and such like 
circumstances." — (III. 225.) 

and under the latter : — 

•' Those qualities of the air and climate, which are supposed 
to work insensibly on the temper, by altering the tone and 
habit of the body, and giving a particular complexion, which, 
though reflexion and reason may sometimes overcome it, 
will yet prevail among the generality of mankind, and have an 
influence on their manners." — (III. 225.) 

While admitting and exemplifying the great 
influence of moral causes, Hume remarks — 

"As to physical causes, I am inclined to doubt altogether 
of their operation in this particular ; nor do I think that men 
owe anything of their temper or genius to the air, food, or 
climate."— (III. 227.) 

Hume certainly would not have accepted the 
' rice theory " in explanation of the social state of 



28 HUME I 

the Hindoos ; and, it may be safely assumed, that 
he would not have had recourse to the circum- 
ambience of the " melancholy main " to account 
for the troublous history of Ireland. He supports 
his views by a variety of strong arguments, 
among which, at the present conjuncture, it is 
worth noting that the following occurs — 

" Where any accident, as a difference in language or religion, 
keeps two nations, inhabiting the same country, from mixing 
with one another, they will preserve during several centuries 
a distinct and even opposite set of manners. The integrity, 
gravity, and bravery of the Turks, form an exact contrast to 
the deceit, levity, and cowardice of the modern Greeks." — 
(III. 233.) 

The question of the influence of race, which 
plays so great a part in modern political specula- 
tions, was hardly broached in Hume's time, but he 
had an inkling of its importance : — 

"I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior 
to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of 
that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in 
action or speculation. . . . Such a uniform and constant 
difference [between the negroes and the whites] could not 
happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made 
an original distinction between these breeds of men. . . . 
In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of 
parts and learning ; but it is likely he is admired for slender 
accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words 
plainly."— (III. 236.) 

The " Essays" met with the success they deserved. 
Hume wrote to Henry Home in June, 1742 : — 



I EARLY LIFE 29 

"The Essays are all sold in London, as I am informed 
by two letters from English gentlemen of my acquaintance. 
There is a demand for them ; and, as one of them tells me, 
Innys, the great bookseller in Paul's Churchyard, wonders 
there is not a new edition, for he cannot find copies for his 
customers. I am also told that Dr. Butler has everywhere 
recommended them ; so that I hope that they will have some 
success." 

Hume had sent Butler a copy of the " Treatise ' 
and had called upon him, in London, but he was 
out of town ; and being shortly afterwards made 
Bishop of Bristol, Hume seems to have thought 
that further advances on his part might not be 
well received. 

Greatly comforted by this measure of success, 
Hume remained at Ninewells, rubbing up his 
Greek, until 1745 ; when, at the mature age of 
thirty-four, he made his entry into practical life, 
by becoming bear-leader to the Marquis of Annan- 
dale, a young nobleman of feeble body and 
feebler mind. As might have been predicted, 
this venture was not more fortunate than his 
previous ones ; and, after a year's endurance, 
diversified latterly with pecuniary squabbles, in 
which Hume's tenacity about a somewhat small 
claim is remarkable, the engagement came to an 
end. 



CHAPTER II 

LATER YEARS: THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

In 1744, Hume's friends had endeavoured to 
procure his nomination to the Chair of " Ethics 
and pneumatic philosophy " x in the University 
of Edinburgh. About this matter he writes to his 
friend William Mure : — 

"The accusation of heresy, deism, scepticism, atheism, &c, 
&c., &c. was started against me ; but never took, being bore 
down by the contrary authority of all the good company in 
town." * 

If the " good company in town " bore down the 
first three of these charges, it is to be hoped, for 
the sake of their veracity, that they knew their 
candidate chiefly as the very good company that 
he always was ; and had paid as little attention, 
as good company usually does, to so solid a work 
as the "Treatise." Hume expresses a naive 

1 " Pneumatic philosophy" must not be confounded with the 
theory of elastic fluids ; though, as Scottish chairs have, before 
now, combined natural with civil history, the mistake would be 
pardonable. 



II 



LATER YEARS 31 



surprise, not unmixed with indignation, that 
Hutcheson and Leechman, both clergymen and 
sincere, though liberal, professors of orthodoxy, 
should have expressed doubts as to his fitness for 
becoming a professedly presbyterian teacher of 
presbyterian youth. The town council, however, 
would not have him, and filled up the place with 
a safe nobody. 

In May, 1746, a new prospect opened. General 
St. Clair was appointed to the command of an 
expedition to Canada, and he invited Hume, at a 
week's notice, to be his secretary ; to which office 
that of judge advocate was afterwards added. 

Hume writes to a friend : " The office is very 
genteel, 10s. a day, perquisites, and no expenses ; ' 
and, to another, he speculates on the chance of 
procuring a company in an American regiment. 
"But this I build not on, nor indeed am I very 
fond of it," he adds ; and this was fortunate, for 
the expedition, after dawdling away the summer 
in port, was suddenly diverted to an attack on 
L'Orient, where it achieved a huge failure and 
returned ignominiously to England. 

A letter to Henry Home, written when this un- 
lucky expedition was recalled, shows that Hume 
had already seriously turned his attention to his- 
tory. Referring to an invitation to go over to 
Flanders with the General, he says : 

" Had I any fortune which would give me a prospect of 
leisure and opportunity to prosecute my historical projects. 



32 HUME 



II 



nothing could be more useful to me, and I should pick up more 
literary knowledge in one campaign by being in the General's 
family, and being introduced frequently to the Duke's, than 
most officers could do after many years' service. But to what 
can all this serv r e ? I am a philosopher, and so I suppose must 
continue. " 



But this vaticination was shortly to prove 
erroneous. Hume seems to have made a very 
favourable impression on General St. Clair, as he 
did upon every one with whom he came into 
personal contact ; for, being charged with a mission 
to the Court of Turin, in 1748, the General insisted 
upon the appointment of Hume as his secretary. 
He further made him one of his aides-de-camp ; 
so that the philosopher was obliged to encase his 
more than portly, and by no means elegant, figure 
in a military uniform. Lord Charlemont, who 
met him at Turin, says he was " disguised in 
scarlet," and that he wore his uniform "like a 
grocer of the train-bands." Hume, always ready 
for a joke at his own expense, tells of the con- 
siderate kindness with which, at a reception at 
Vienna, the Empress-dowager released him and 
his friends from the necessity of walking back- 
wards. " We esteemed ourselves very much 
obliged to her for this attention, especially my 
companions, who were desperately afraid of my 
falling on them and crushing them." 

Notwithstanding the many attractions of this 
appointment, Hume writes that he leaves home 



n 



LATER YEARS 33 



" with infinite regret, where I had treasured up 
stores of study and plans of thinking for many 
years ; ' and his only consolation is that the op- 
portunity of becoming conversant with state affairs 
may be profitable : — 

"I shall have an opportunity of seeing courts and camps; 
and if I can afterward be so happy as to attain leisure and other 
opportunities, this knowledge may even turn to account to me 
as a man of letters, which I confess has always been the sole 
object of my ambition. I have long had an intention, in my 
riper years, of composing some history ; and I question not but 
some greater experience in the operations of the field and the 
intrigues of the cabinet will be requisite, in order to enable me 
to speak with judgment on these subjects." 

Hume returned to London in 1749, and during 
his stay there, his mother died, to his heartfelt 
sorrow. A curious story in connection with this 
event is told by Dr. Carlyle, who knew Hume 
well, and whose authority is perfectly trustworthy. 

"Mr. Boyle hearing of it, soon after went to his apartment, 
for they lodged in the same house, where he found him in the 
deepest affliction and in a flood of tears. After the usual topics 
and condolences Mr. Boyle said to him, c My friend, you owe 
this uncommon grief to having thrown off the principles of 
religion : for if you had not, you would have been consoled 
with the firm belief that the good lady, who was not only the 
best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, was com- 
pletely happy in the realms of the just/ To which David 
replied, 'Though I throw out my speculations to entertain 
the learned and metaphysical world, yet in other things I do 
not think so differently from the rest of the world as you 



imagine.' " 



146 



34 HUME 



II 



If Hume had told this story to Dr. Carlyle, the 
latter would have said so ; it must therefore have 
come from Mr. Boyle ; and one would like to have 
the opportunity of cross-examining that gentleman 
as to Hume's exact words and their context, before 
implicitly accepting his version of the conversation. 
Mr. Boyle's experience of mankind must have 
been small, if he had not seen the firmest of 
believers overwhelmed with grief by a like loss, 
and as completely inconsolable. Hume may have 
thrown off Mr. Boyle's " principles of religion," but 
he was none the less a very honest man, perfectly 
open and candid, and the last person to use am- 
biguous phraseology among his friends ; unless, 
indeed, he saw no other way of putting a stop to 
the intrusion of unmannerly twaddle amongst the 
bitter-sweet memories stirred in his affectionate 
nature by so heavy a blow. 

The " Philosophical Essays " or " Inquiry " was 
published in 1748, while Hume was away with 
General St. Clair, and, on his return to England, 
he had the mortification to find it overlooked in 
the hubbub caused by Middle ton's " Free Inquiry," 
and its bold handling of the topic of the " Essay 
on Miracles," by which Hume doubtless expected 
the public to be startled. 

Between 1749 and 1751, Hume resided at 
Ninewells, with his brother and sister, and busied 
himself with the composition of his most finished, 
if not his most important works, the " Dialogues 



II 



LATER YEARS 35 



on Natural Religion/' the "Inquiry Concerning 
the Principles of Morals/' and the " Political 
Discourses." 

" The Dialogues on Natural Religion " were 
touched and re-touched, at intervals, for a quarter 
of a century, and were not published till after 
Hume's death : but the " Inquiry Concerning the 
Principles of Morals " appeared in 1751, and the 
"Political Discourses" in 1752. Full reference 
will be made to the two former in the exposition 
of Hume's philosophical views. The last has been 
well said to be the " cradle of political economy : 
and much as that science has been investigated 
and expounded in later times, these earliest, 
shortest, and simplest developments of its prin- 
ciples are still read with delight even by those 
who are masters of all the literature of this great 
subject." * 

The " Wealth of Nations," the masterpiece of 
Hume's close friend, Adam Smith, it must be 
remembered, did not appear before 1776, so that, 
in political economy, no less than in philosophy, 
Hume was an original, a daring, and a fertile 
innovator. 

The '*' Political Essays ' had a great and rapid 
success; translated into French in 1753, and 
again in 1754, they conferred a European reputa- 
tion upon their author; and, what was more to 

Burton's Life of David Hume, i. p. 354. 



36 HUME 



II 



the purpose, influenced the later French school of 
economists of the eighteenth century. 

By this time, Hume had not only attained a 
high reputation in the world of letters, but he 
considered himself a man of independent fortune. 
His frugal habits had enabled him to accumulate 
£1,000, and he tells Michael Ramsay in 1751 : — 

"While interest remains as at present, I have £50 a year, a 
hundred pounds worth of books, great store of linens and fine 
clothes, and near £100 in my pocket ; along with order, 
frugality, a strong spirit of independency, good health, a 
contented humour, and an unabated love of study. In these 
circumstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and 
fortunate ; and so far from being willing to draw my ticket 
over again in the lottery of life, there are very few prizes with 
which I would make an exchange. After some deliberation, 
I am resolved to settle in Edinburgh, and hope I shall be able 
with these revenues to say with Horace : — 

* Est bona librorum et provisse frugis in annum 
Copia.'" 

It would be difficult to find a better example of 
the honourable independence and cheerful self- 
reliance which should distinguish a man of letters, 
and which characterised Hume throughout his 
career. By honourable effort, the boy's noble 
ideal of life, became the man's reality; and, at 
forty, Hume had the happiness of finding that he 
had not wasted his youth in the pursuit of 
illusions, but that " the solid certainty of waking 
bliss " lay before him in the free play of his powers 
in their appropriate sphere. 



II 



LATER YEARS 37 



In 1751, Hume removed to Edinburgh and took 
up his abode on a flat in one of those prodigious 
houses in the Lawnmarket, which still excite the 
admiration of tourists; afterwards moving to a 
house in the Canongate. His sister joined him, 
adding £30 a year to the common stock ; and, in 
one of his charmingly playful letters to Dr. 
Clephane, he thus describes his establishment, in 
1753: 

"I shall exult and triumph to you a little that I have now 
at last — being turned of forty, to my own honour, to that of 
learning, and to that of the present age — arrived at the dignity 
of being a householder. 

"About seven months ago, I got a house of my own, and 
completed a regular family, consisting of a head, viz., myself, 
and two inferior members, a maid and a cat. My sister has 
since joined me, and keeps me company. "With frugality, I 
can reach, I find, cleanliness, warmth, light, plenty, and con- 
tentment. What would you have more ? Independence ? I 
have it in a supreme degree. Honour ? That is not altogether 
wanting. Grace ? That will come in time. A wife ? That 
is none of the indispensable requisites of life. Books ? That 
is one of them ; and I have more than I can use. In short, I 
cannot find any pleasure of consequence which I am not 
possessed of in a greater or less degree : and, without any 
great effort of philosophy, I may be easy and satisfied. 

" As there is no happiness without occupation, I have begun 
a work which will occupy me several years, and which yields 
me much satisfaction. 'Tis a History of Britain from the 
Union of the Crowns to the present time. I have already 
finished the reign of King James. My friends flatter me (by 
this I mean that they don't flatter me) that I have succeeded." 

In 1752, the Faculty of Advocates elected 
Hume their librarian, an office which, though it 



38 HUME 



II 



yielded little emolument — the salary was only 
forty pounds a year — was valuable as it placed 
the resources of a large library at his disposal. 
The proposal to give Hume even this paltry place 
caused a great outcry, on the old score of infidel- 
ity. But as Hume writes, in a jubilant letter to 
Clephane (February 4, 1752) : — 

" I carried the election by a considerable majority. . . . 
What is more extraordinary, the cry of religion conld not 
hinder the ladies from being violently my partisans, and I owe 
my success in a great measure to their solicitations. One has 
broke off all commerce with her lover because he voted against 
me ! And Mr. Lockhart, in a speech to the Faculty, said there 
was no walking the streets, nor even enjoying one's own fire- 
side, on account of their importunate zeal. The town says that 
even his bed was not safe for him, though his wife was cousin- 
german to my antagonist. 

' ' 'Twas vulgarly given out that the contest was between 
Deists and Christians, and when the news of my success came 
to the playhouse, the whisper rose that the Christians were 
defeated. Are you not surprised that we conld keep our popu- 
larity, notwithstanding this imputation, which my friends could 
not deny to be well founded ? " 

It would seem that the " good company " was 
less enterprising in its asseverations in this canvass 
than in the last. 

The first volume of the "History of Great 
Britain, containing the reign of James I. and 
Charles I.," was published in 1754. At first, the 
sale was large, especially in Edinburgh, and . if 
notoriety per se was Hume's object, he attained it. 



H LATER YEARS 39 

But lie liked applause as well as fame, and, to his 
bitter disappointment, he says : — 

" I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and 
even detestation : English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, 
Churchman and Sectary, Freethinker and Religionist, Patriot 
and Courtier, united in their rage against the man who had 
presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. 
and the Earl of Strafford ; and after the first ebullitions of their 
fury were over, what was still more mortifying, the book 
seemed to fall into oblivion. Mr. Millar told me that in a 
twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of it. I scarcely, 
indeed, heard of one man in the three kingdoms, considerable 
for rank or letters, that could endure the book. I must only 
except the primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the primate of 
Ireland, Dr. Stone, which seem two odd exceptions. These 
dignified prelates separately sent me messages not to be 
discouraged." 

It certainly is odd to think of David Hume 
being comforted in his affliction by the inde- 
pendent and spontaneous sympathy of a pair of 
archbishops. But the instincts of the dignified 
prelates guided them rightly; for, as the great 
painter of English history in Whig pigments has 
been careful to point out, 1 Hume's historical 
picture, though a great work, drawn by a master 
hand, has all the lights Tory, and all the shades 
Whig. 

Hume's ecclesiastical enemies seem to have 
thought that their opportunity had now arrived ; 
and an attempt was made to get the General 

1 Lord Macaulay, Article on History, Edinburgh Review, vol. 
lxvii. 



40 HUME 



II 



Assembly of 1756 to appoint a committee to 
inquire into his writings. But, after a keen 
debate, the proposal was rejected by fifty votes to 
seventeen. Hume does not appear to have 
troubled himself about the matter, and does not 
even think it worth mention in " My Own Life/' 

In 1756 he tells Clephane that he is worth 
£1,600 sterling, and consequently master of an 
income which must have been wealth to a man of 
his frugal habits. In the same year, he published 
the second volume of the " History," which met 
with a much better reception than the first ; and, 
in 1757, one of his most remarkable works, the 
" Natural History of Religion," appeared. In the 
same year, he resigned his office of librarian to 
the Faculty of Advocates, and he projected 
removal to London, probably to superintend 
the publication of the additional volume of the 
" History." 

" I shall certainly be in London next summer ; and probably 
to remain there during life : at least, if I can settle myself to 
my mind, which I beg you to have an eye to. A room in a 
sober discreet family, who would not be averse to admit 
a sober, discreet, virtuous, regular, quiet, goodnatured man 
of a bad character — such a room, I say, would suit me 
extremely." * 

The promised visit took place in the latter part 
of the year 1758, and he remained in the 

1 Letter to Clephane, 3rd September, 1757. 



II 



LATER YEARS 41 



metropolis for the greater part of 1759. The two 
volumes of the " History of England under the 
House of Tudor ' were published in London, 
shortly after Hume's return to Edinburgh ; and, 
according to his own account, they raised almost 
as great a clamour as the first two had done. 

Busily occupied with the continuation of his 
historical labours, Hume remained in Edinburgh 
until 1763 ; when, at the request of Lord 
Hertford, who was going as ambassador to France, 
he was appointed to the embassy ; with the 
promise of the secretaryship, and, in the mean- 
while, performing the duties of that office. At 
first, Hume declined the offer; but, as it was 
particularly honourable to so well abused a man, 
on account of Lord Hertford's high reputation for 
virtue and piety, 1 and no less advantageous by 
reason of the increase of fortune which it secured 
to him, he eventually accepted it. 

In France, Hume's reputation stood far higher 
than in Britain ; several of his works had been 
translated ; he had exchanged letters with 
Montesquieu and with Helvetius ; Rousseau had 
appealed to him ; and the charming Madame de 
Boufflers had drawn him into a correspondence, 

1 "You must know that Lord Hertford Las so high a charac- 
ter for piety, that his taking me by the hand is a kind of 
regeneration to me, and all past offences are now wiped off. 
But all these views are trifling to one of my age and temper." — 
Hume to Edmonstone, 9th January, 1764. Lord Hertford had 
procured him a pension of £200 a year for life from the King, 
and the secretaryship was worth £1,000 a year. 



42 HUME 



II 



marked by almost passionate enthusiasm on her 
part, and as fair an imitation of enthusiasm as 
Hume was capable of, on his. In the extra- 
ordinary mixture of learning, wit, humanity, 
frivolity, and profligacy which then characterised 
the highest French society, a new sensation was 
worth anything, and it mattered little whether 
the cause thereof was a philosopher or a poodle ; 
so Hume had a great success in the Parisian 
world. Great nobles feted him, and great ladies 
were not content unless the " gros David " was to 
be seen at their receptions, and in their boxes at 
the theatre. " At the opera his broad unmeaning 
face was usually to be seen entre deux jolis minois" 
says Lord Charlemont. 1 Hume's cool head was 
by no means turned ; but he took the goods the 
gods provided with much satisfaction ; and every- 
where won golden opinions by his unaffected good 
sense and thorough kindness of heart. 

Over all this part of Hume's career, as over the 
surprising episode of the quarrel with Rousseau, 
if that can be called quarrel which was lunatic 

1 Madame d'Epinay gives a ludicrous account of Hume's per- 
formance when pressed into a tableau, as a Sultan between two 
slaves, personated for the occasion by two of the prettiest women 
in Paris : — 

" II les regarde attentivement, il se frappe le ventre et les 
genoux a plusieurs reprises et ne trouve jamais autre chosealeur 
dire que. Eh Men! rues demoiselles. — Eh Men! vous voild 
done. . . . Eh Men ! voas voild . . . votes voild iei ? Cette 
phrase dura un quart d'heure sans qu'il put en sortir. Une 
d'elles se leva d'impatience : Ah, dit-elle, je m'en etois bien 
doutee, cet homme n'est bon qu'a manger du veau 1 " — Burton's 
Life of Hume, vol. ii. p. 224. 



II 



LATER YEARS 43 



malignity on Kousseau's side and thorough 
generosity and patience on Hume's, I may pass 
lightly. The story is admirably told by Mr. 
Burton, to whose volumes I refer the reader. 
Nor need I dwell upon Hume's short tenure of 
office in London, as Under-Secretary of State, 
between 1767 and 1769. Success and wealth are 
rarely interesting, and Hume's case is no exception 
to the rule. 

According to his own description the cares of 
official life were not overwhelming. 

"My way of life here is very uniform and by no means 
disagreeable. I have all the forenoon in the Secretary's house, 
from ten till three, when there arrive from time to time 
messengers that bring me all the secrets of the kingdom, and, 
indeed, of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. I am seldom 
hurried ; but have leisure at intervals to take up a book, or 
write a private letter, or converse with a friend that may call 
for me ; and from dinner to bed-time is all my own. If you 
add to this that the person with whom I have the chief, if not 
only, transactions, is the most reasonable, equal-tempered, and 
gentleman-like man imaginable, and Lady Aylesbury the same, 
you will certainly think I have no reason to complain ; and I 
am far from complaining. I only shall not regret when my 
duty is over ; because to me the situation can lead to nothing, 
at least in all probability ; and reading, and sauntering, and 
lounging, and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme 
happiness — I mean my full contentment." 

Hume's duty was soon over, and he returned to 
Edinburgh in 1769, "very opulent " in the 
possession of £1,000 a year, and determined to 
take what remained to him of life pleasantly 



44 HUME II 

and easily. In October, 1769, he writes to 
Elliot :— 

" I have been settled here two months, and am here body and 
soul, without casting the least thought of regret to London, or 
even to Paris ... I live still, and must for a twelvemonth, in 
my old house in James's Court, which is very cheerful and even 
elegant, but too small to display my great talent for cookery, 
the science to which I intend to addict the remaining years of 
my life. I have just now lying on the table before me a receipt 
for making soitpe a la reine, copied with my own hand ; for 
beef and cabbage (a charming dish) and old mutton and old 
claret nobody excels me. I make also sheep's-head broth in 
a manner that Mr. Keith speaks of for eight days after ; and 
the Due de Mvernois would bind himself apprentice to my lass 
to learn it. I have already sent a challenge to David Moncrieff : 
you will see that in a twelvemonth he will take to the writing 
of history, the field I have deserted ; for as to the giving of 
dinners, he can now have no further pretensions. I should 
have made a very bad use of my abode in Paris if I could not 
get the better of a mere provincial like him. All my friends 
encourage me in this ambition ; as thinking it will redound 
very much to my honour." 

In 1770, Hume built himself a house in the 
new town of Edinburgh, which was then springing 
up. It was the first house in the street, and a 
frolicsome young lady chalked upon the wall " St. 
David's Street." Hume's servant complained to 
her master, who replied, " Never mind, lassie, 
many a better man has been made a saint of 
before," and the street retains its title to this 
day. 

In the following six years, the house in St. 
David's Street was the centre of the accomplished 



II LATER YEARS 45 

and refined society which then distinguished 
Edinburgh. Adam Smith, Blair, and Ferguson 
were within easy reach ; and what remains of 
Hume's correspondence with Sir Gilbert Elliot, 
Colonel Edmonstone, and Mrs. Cockburn gives 
pleasant glimpses of his social surroundings, and 
enables us to understand his contentment with 
his absence from the more perturbed, if more 
brilliant, worlds of Paris and London. 

Towards London, Londoners, and indeed 
Englishmen in general, Hume entertained a 
dislike, mingled with contempt, which was as 
nearly rancorous as any emotion of his could be. 
During his residence in Paris, in 1764 and 1765, 
he writes to Blair :— 

" The taste for literature is neither decayed nor depraved 
here, as with the barbarians who inhabit the banks of the 
Thames." 

And he speaks of the " general regard paid to 
genius and learning " in France as one of the 
points in which it most differs from England. 
Ten years later, he cannot even thank Gibbon for 
his History without the lefthanded compliment, 
that he should never have expected such an 
excellent work from the pen of an Englishman. 
Early in 1765, Hume writes to Millar : — 

"The rage and prejudice of parties frighten me, and above 
all, this rage against the Scots, which is so dishonourable, and 
indeed so infamous, to the English nation. We hear that it 



46 HUME 



II 



increases every day without the least appearance of provocation 
on our part. It has frequently made me resolve never in my 
life to set foot on English ground. I dread, if I should under- 
take a more modern history, the impertinence and ill-manners 
to which it would expose me ; and I was willing to know from 
you whether former prejudices had so far subsided as to ensure 
me of a good reception." 

His fears were kindly appeased by Millars 
assurance that the English were not prejudiced 
against the Scots in general, but against the 
particular Scot, Lord Bute, who was supposed to 
be the guide, philosopher, and friend, of both the 
King and his mother. 

To care nothing about literature, to dislike 
Scotchmen, and to be insensible to the merits of 
David Hume, was a combination of iniquities on 
the part of the English nation, which would have 
been amply sufficient to ruffle the temper of the 
philosophic historian, who, without being foolishly 
vain, had certainly no need of what has been said 
to be the one form of prayer in which his country- 
men, torn as they are by theological differences, 
agree ; " Lord ! gie us a gude conceit o* oursels." 
But when, to all this, these same Southrons 
added a passionate admiration for Lord Chatham, 
who was in Hume's eyes a charlatan ; and filled 
up the cup of their abominations by cheering for 
" Wilkes and Liberty," Hume's wrath knew no 
bounds, and, between 1768 and 1770, he pours a 
perfect Jeremiad into the bosom of his friend Sir 
Gilbert Elliot. 



II 



LATER YEARS 47 



"Oh! how I long to see America and the East Indies 
revolted, totally and finally — the revenue reduced to half — 
public credit fully discredited by bankruptcy — the third of 
London in ruins, and the rascally mob subdued ! I think I 
am not too old to despair of being witness to all these 
blessings. 

" I am delighted to see the daily and hourly progress of 
madness and folly and wickedness in England. The consum- 
mation of these qualities are the true ingredients for making 
a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal 
and ruinous convulsion — as I hope will soon be the case with 
that pernicious people ! " 



Even from the secure haven of James's Court, 
the maledictions continue to pour forth : — 



" Nothing but a rebellion and bloodshed will open the eyes 
of that deluded people ; though were they alone concerned, I 
think it is no matter what becomes of them. . . . Our 
government has become a chimera, and is too perfect, in 
point of liberty, for so rude a beast as an Englishman ; who 
is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted by above a century of 
licentiousness. The misfortune is that this liberty can scarcely 
be retrenched without danger of being entirely lost ; at least 
the fatal effects of licentiousness must first be made palpable 
by some extreme mischief resulting from it. I may wish 
that the catastrophe should rather fall on our posterity, but it 
hastens on with such large strides as to leave little room for 
hope. 

" I am running over again the last edition of my History, in 
order to correct it still further. I either soften or expunge 
many villainous seditious Whig strokes which had crept into 
it. I wish that my indignation at the present madness, en- 
couraged by lies, calumnies, imposture, and every infamous act 
usual among popular leaders, may not throw me into the opposite 
extreme." 



48 HUME 



II 



A wise wish, indeed. Posterity respectful^ 
concurs therein ; and subjects Hume's estimate of 
England and things English to such modifications 
as it would probably have undergone had the wish 
been fulfilled. 

In 1775, Hume's health began to fail; and in 
the spring of the following year, his disorder, which 
appears to have been haemorrhage of the bowels, 
attained such a height that he knew it must be 
fatal. So he made his will, and wrote " My Own 
Life," the conclusion of which is one of the most 
cheerful, simple, and dignified leave-takings of life 
and all its concerns, extant. 

" I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered 
very little pain from my disorder ; and what is more strange, 
have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never 
suffered a moment's abatement of spirits ; insomuch that 
were I to name the period of my life which I should most 
choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this 
later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study and 
the same gaiety in company ; I consider, besides, that a man 
of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities ; 
and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's 
breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could 
have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more 
detached from life than I am at present. 

"To conclude historically with my own character, I am, or 
rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking 
of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my senti- 
ments) ; I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command 
of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable 
of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great 
moderation in all my passions, Even my love of literary 



II 



LATER YEARS 49 



fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwith- 
standing my frequent disappointments. My company was 
not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the 
studious and literary ; and as I took a particular pleasure in the 
company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased 
with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though 
most men any wise eminent, have found reason to complain 
of calumny, I never was touched or even attacked by her 
baleful tooth ; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the 
rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be 
disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends 
never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my 
character and conduct ; not but that the zealots, we may well 
suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any 
story to my disadvantage but they could never find any which 
they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say 
there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but 
I hope it is not a misplaced one ; and this is a matter of fact 
which is easily cleared and ascertained." 

Hume died in Edinburgh on the 25th of August, 
1776, and, a few days later, his body, attended by 
a great concourse of people, who seemed to have 
anticipated for it the fate appropriate to the re- 
mains of wizards and necromancers, was deposited 
in a spot selected by himself, in an old burial- 
ground on the eastern slope of the Calton Hill. 

From the summit of this hill, there is a prospect 
unequalled by any to be seen from the midst of a 
great city. Westward lies the Forth, and beyond 
it, dimly blue, the far away Highland hills ; east- 
ward, rise the bold contours of Arthur's Seat and 
the rugged crags of the Castle rock, with the gray 
Old Town of Edinburgh ; while, far below, from a 
147 



50 HUME 



II 



maze of crowded thoroughfares, the hoarse murmur 
of the toil of a polity of energetic men is borne 
upon the ear. At times a man may be as solitary 
here as in a veritable wilderness ; and may meditate 
undisturbedly upon the epitome of nature and of 
man — the kingdoms of this world — spread out 
before him. 

Surely, there is a fitness in the choice of this 
last resting-place by the philosopher and historian, 
who saw so clearly that these two kingdoms form 
but one realm, governed by uniform laws and 
alike based on impenetrable darkness and eternal 
silence ; and faithful to the last to that profound 
veracity which was the secret of his philosophic 
greatness, he ordered that the simple Roman 
tomb which marks his grave should bear no 
inscription but 

DAVID HUME 

Born 1711. Died 1776. 

Leaving it to posterity to add the rest. 

It was by the desire and at the suggestion of 
my friend, the Editor of this Series, 1 that I under- 
took to attempt to help posterity in the difficult 
business of knowing what to add to Hume's 
epitaph ; and I might, with justice, throw upon 
him the responsibility of my apparent presump- 
tion in occupying a place among the men of 

1 English Men of Letters. Edited by John Morley. 



II 



LATER YEARS 51 



letters, who are engaged with him, in their proper 
function of writing about English Men of Letters. 

That to which succeeding generations have 
made, are making, and will make, continual addi- 
tions, however, is Hume's fame as a philosopher ; 
and, though I know that my plea will add to my 
offence in some quarters, I must plead, in extenua- 
tion of my audacity, that philosophy lies in the 
province of science, and not in that of letters. 

In dealing with Hume's Life, I have en- 
deavoured, as far as possible, to make him speak 
for himself. If the extracts from his letters and 
essays which I have given do not sufficiently show 
what manner of man he was, I am sure that no- 
thing I could say would make the case plainer. In 
the. exposition of Hume's philosophy which follows, 
I have pursued the same plan, and I have applied 
myself to the task of selecting and arranging in 
systematic order, the passages which appeared to 
me to contain the clearest statements of Hume's 
opinions. 

I should have been glad to be able to confine 
myself to this duty, and to limit my own com- 
ments to so much as was absolutely necessary to 
connect my excerpts. Here and there, however, 
it must be confessed that more is seen of my 
thread than of Hume's beads. My excuse must 
be an ineradicable tendency to try to make things 
clear ; while, I may further hope, that there is 
nothing in what I may have said, which is incon- 



52 HUME n 

sistent with the logical development of Hume's 
principles. 

My authority for the facts of Hume's life is the 
admirable biography, published in 1846, by Mr. 
John Hill Burton. The edition of Hume's works 
from which all citations are made is that published 
by Black and Tait in Edinburgh, in 1826. In 
this edition, the Essays are reprinted from the 
edition of 1777, corrected by the author for the 
press a short time before his death. It is well 
printed in four handy volumes ; and as my copy 
has long been in my possession, and bears marks 
of much reading, it would have been troublesome 
for me to refer to any other. But, for the con- 
venience of those who possess some other edition, 
the following table of the contents of the edition 
of 1826, with the paging of the four volumes, is 

given : — 

VOLUME I. 

Treatise of Human Nature. 

Book I. Of the Understanding, p. 5 to the end, p. 347. 

VOLUME II 

Treatise of Human Nature. 

Book II. Of the Passions, p. 3 — p, 215. 

Book III. Of Morals, p. 219— p. 415. 

Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, p. 419— p. 548. 

Appendix to the Treatise, p. 551 — p. 560. 



II LATER YEARS 53 

VOLUME III. 

Essays, Moral and Political, p. 3 — p. 282. 
Political Discourses, p. 2S5— p. 579. 

VOLUME IV. 

An Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding, 

p. 3— p. 233. 

An Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 

p. 237— p. 431. 

The Natural History of Religion, p. 435 — p. 513. 

Additional Essays, p. 517 — p. 577. 

As the volume and the page of the volume are 
given in my references, it will be easy, by the 
help of this table, to learn where to look for any 
passage cited, in differently arranged editions. 



PART TI 

HUME'S PHILOSOPHY 



CHAPTER I 

THE OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 

Kant has said that the business of philosophy is 
to answer three questions : What can I know ? 
What ought I to do ? and For what may I hope ? 
But it is pretty plain that these three resolve 
themselves, in the long run, into the first. For 
rational expectation and moral action are alike 
based upon beliefs ; and a belief is void of justifica- 
tion, unless its subject-matter lies within the 
boundaries of possible knowledge, and unless its 
evidence satisfies the conditions which experience 
imposes as the guarantee of credibility. 

Fundamentally, then, philosophy is the answer 
to the question, What can I know ? and it is by 
applying itself to this problem, that philosophy is 
properly distinguished as a special department of 
scientific research. What is commonly called 
science, whether mathematical, physical, or bio- 
logical, consists of the answers which mankind 
have been able to give to the inquiry, What 



58 HUME I 

do I know ? They furnish us with the results of 
the mental operations which constitute thinking ; 
while philosophy, in the stricter sense of the term, 
inquires into the foundation of the first principles 
which those operations assume or imply. 

But though, by reason of the special purpose of 
philosophy, its distinctness from other branches of 
scientific investigation may be properly vindicated, 
it is easy to see that, from the nature of its subject- 
matter, it is intimately and, indeed, inseparably 
connected with one branch of science. For it is 
obviously impossible to answer the question, What 
can we know ? unless, in the first place, there is a 
clear understanding as to what is meant by know- 
ledge ; and, having settled this point, the next 
step is to inquire how we come by that which we 
allow to be knowledge ; for, upon the reply, 
turns the answer to the further question, whether, 
from the nature of the case, there are limits to 
the knowable or not. While, finally, inasmuch as 
What can I know ? not only refers to knowledge 
of the past or of the present, but to the confident 
expectation which we call knowledge of the 
future; it is necessary to ask, further, what 
justification can be alleged for trusting to the 
guidance of our expectations in practical conduct. 

It surely needs no argumentation to show, that 
the first problem cannot be approached without 
the examination of the contents of the mind ; and 
the determination of how much of these contents 



I OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 59 

may be called knowledge. Nor can the second 
problem be dealt with in any other fashion ; for it 
is only by the observation of the growth of know- 
ledge that we can rationally hope to discover how 
knowledge grows. But the solution of the third 
problem simply involves the discussion of the 
data obtained by the investigation of the foregoing 
two. 

Thus, in order to answer three out of the four 
subordinate questions into which What can I 
know ? breaks up, we must have recourse to that 
investigation of mental phenomena, the results of 
which are embodied in the science of psychology. 

Psychology is a part of the science of life or 
biology, which differs from the other branches of 
that science, merely in so far as it deals with the 
psychical, instead of the physical, phenomena of 
life. 

As there is an anatomy of the body, so there is 
an anatomy of the mind ; the psychologist dissects 
mental phenomena into elementary states of con- 
sciousness, as the anatomist resolves limbs into 
tissues, and tissues into cells. The one traces the 
development of complex organs from simple rudi- 
ments ; the other follows the building up of com- 
plex conceptions out of simpler constituents of 
thought. As the physiologist inquires into the 
way in which the so-called " functions " of the 
body are performed, so the psychologist studies 
the so-called " faculties ' of the mind. Even a 



60 HUME I 

cursory attention to the ways and works of the 
lower animals suggests a comparative anatomy 
and physiology of the mind ; and the doctrine of 
evolution presses for application as much in the 
one field as in the other. 

But there is more than a parallel, there is a 
close and intimate connection between psychology 
and physiology. No one doubts that, at any rate 
some mental states are dependent for their exist- 
ence on the performance of the functions of 
particular bodily organs. There is no seeing 
without eyes, and no hearing without ears. If 
the origin of the contents of the mind is truly a 
philosophical problem, then the philosopher who 
attempts to deal with that problem, without 
acquainting himself with the physiology of sensa- 
tion, has no more intelligent conception of his 
business than the physiologist, who thinks he can 
discuss locomotion, without an acquaintance with 
the principles of mechanics ; or respiration, with- 
out some tincture of chemistry. 

On whatever ground we term physiology, science, 
psychology is entitled to the same appellation ; 
and the method of investigation which elucidates 
the true relations of the one set of phenomena will 
discover those of the other. Hence, as philosophy 
is, in great measure, the exponent of the logical 
consequences of certain data established by 
psychology ; and as psychology itself differs from 
physical science only in the nature of its subject- 



I OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 61 

matter, and not in its method of investigation, it 
would seem to be an obvious conclusion, that 
philosophers are likely to be successful in their 
inquiries, in proportion as they are familiar with 
the application of scientific method to ]ess ab- 
struse subjects ; just as it seems to require no 
elaborate demonstration, that an astronomer, who 
wishes to comprehend the solar system, w T ould do 
well to acquire a preliminary acquaintance with 
the elements of physics. And it is accordant with 
this presumption, that the men who have made 
the most important positive additions to philosophy, 
such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant, not to 
mention more recent examples, have been deeply 
imbued with the spirit of physical science ; and, 
in some cases, such as those of Descartes and 
Kant, nave been largely acquainted with its 
details. On the other hand, the founder of 
Positivism no less admirably illustrates the con- 
nection of scientific incapacity with philosophical 
incompetence. In truth, the laboratory is the 
fore-court of the temple of philosophy ; and whoso 
has not offered sacrifices and undergone purifica- 
tion there, has little chance of admission into the 
sanctuary. 

Obvious as these considerations may appear 
to be, it would be wrong to ignore the fact that 
their force is by no means universally admitted. 
On the contrary, the necessity for a proper pyscho- 
logical and physiological training to the student 



62 HUME I 

of philosophy is denied, on the one hand, by the 
" pure metaphysicians," who attempt to base the 
theory of knowing upon supposed necessary and 
universal truths, and assert that scientific observa- 
tion is impossible unless such truths are already 
known or implied : which, to those who are not 
" pure metaphysicians," seems very much as if one 
should say that the fall of a stone cannot be 
observed, unless the law of gravitation is already 
in the mind of the observer. 

On the other hand, the Positivists, so far as 
they accept the teachings of their master, roundly 
assert, at any rate in words, that observation of 
the mind is a thing inherently impossible in itself, 
and that psychology is a chimera — a phantasm 
generated by the fermentation of the dregs of 
theology. Nevertheless, if M. Comte haSi been 
asked what he meant by " physiologie cerebral e," 
except that which other people call " psychology " ; 
and how he knew anything about the functions of 
the brain, except by that very " observation 
interieure," which he declares to be an absurdity 
— it seems probable that he would have found it 
hard to escape the admission, that, in vilipending 
psychology, he had been propounding solemn 
nonsense. 

It is assuredly one of Hume's greatest merits 
that he clearly recognised the fact that philosophy is 
based upon psychology ; and that the inquiry into 
the contents and the operations of the mind must 



I OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 63 

be conducted upon the same principles as a 
physical investigation, if what he calls the " moral 
philosopher " would attain results of as firm and 
definite a character as those which reward the 
"natural philosopher/' 1 The title of his first 
work, a " Treatise of Human Nature, being an 
Attempt to introduce the Experimental method 
of Reasoning into Moral Subjects," sufficiently in- 
dicates the point of view from which Hume 
regarded philosophical problems ; and he tells us in 
the preface, that his object has been to promote 
the construction of a " science of man." 

"'Tis evident that all the sciences have a relation, greater 
or less, to human nature ; and that, however wide any of 
them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one 
passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, 
and Natural Religion are in some measure dependent on the 
science of Man ; since they lie under the cognizance of men, 
and are judged of by their powers and qualities. 'Tis impossible 
to tell what changes and improvements we might make in these 
sciences were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and 
force of human understanding, and could explain the nature of 
the ideas we employ and of the operations we perform in our 
reasonings . . . . To me it seems evident that the essence 
of mind being equally unknown to us with that of external 
bodies, it must be equally impossible to form any notion of its 



1 In a letter to Hutcheson (September 17th, 1739) Hume 
remarks : — " There are different ways of examining the mind as 
well as the body. One may consider it either as an anatomist 
or as a painter : either to discover its most secret springs and 
principles, or to describe the grace and beauty of its actions ; " 
and lie proceeds to justify his own mode of looking at the moral 
sentiments from the anatomist's point of view. 



64 HUME I 

powers and qualities otherwise than from careful and exact 
experiments, and the observation of those particular effects 
which result from its different circumstances and situations. 
And though we must endeavour to render all our principles as 
universal as possible, by tracing up our experiments to the 
utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest 
causes, 'tis still certain we cannot go beyond experience : and 
any hypothesis that pretends to discover the ultimate original 
qualities of human nature, ought at first to be rejected as pre- 
sumptuous and chimerical 

' ' But if this impossibility of explaining ultimate principles 
should be esteemed a defect in the science of man, I will ven- 
ture to affirm, that it is a defect common to it with all the 
sciences, and all the arts, in which we can employ ourselves, 
whether they be such as are cultivated in the schools of the 
philosophers, or practised in the shops of the meanest artizans. 
None of them can go beyond experience, or establish any 
principles which are not founded on that authority. Moral 
philosophy has, indeed, this peculiar disadvantage, which is not 
found in natural, that in collecting its experiments, it cannot 
make them purposely, with premeditation, and after such a 
manner as to satisfy itself concerning every particular diffi- 
culty which may arise. When I am at a loss to know the 
effects of one body upon another in any situation I need 
only put them in that situation, and observe what results from 
it. But should I endeavour to clear up in the same manner 
any l doubt in moral philosophy, by placing myself in the 
same case with that which I consider, 'tis evident this reflection 
and premeditation would so disturb the operation of my natural 
principles, as must render it impossible to form any just con- 
clusion from the phenomenon. We must, therefore, glean up our 
experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human 
life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the 



1 The manner in which Hume constantly refers to the results 
of the observation of the contents and the processes of his own 
mind clearly shows that he has here inadvertently overstated the 
case. 



I OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 65 

world, by men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their 
pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously 
collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a 
science which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much 
superior in utility, to any other of human comprehension." — (I. 
pp. 7—11.) 



All science starts with hypotheses — in other 
words, with assumptions that are unproved, while 
they may be, and often are, erroneous ; but which 
are better than nothing to the seeker after order 
in the maze of phenomena. And the historical 
progress of every science depends on the criticism 
of hypotheses — on the gradual stripping off, that 
is, of their untrue or superfluous parts- — until 
there remains only that exact verbal expression 
of as much as we know of the fact, and no more, 
which constitutes a perfect scientific theory. 

Philosophy has followed the same course as 
other branches of scientific investigation. The 
memorable service rendered to the cause of sound 
thinking by Descartes consisted in this : that he 
laid the foundation of modern philosophical 
criticism by his inquiry into the nature of 
certainty. It is a clear result of the investigation 
started by Descartes, that there is one thing of 
which no doubt can be entertained, for he who 
should pretend to doubt it would thereby prove 
its existence ; and that is the momentary 
consciousness we call a present thought or 
feeling; that is safe, even if all other kinds of 
148 



66 HUME I 

certainty are merely more or less probable 
inferences. Berkeley and Locke, each in his 
way, applied philosophical criticism in other 
directions ; but they always, at ^any rate profess- 
edly, followed the Cartesian maxim of admitting 
no propositions to be true but such as are clear, 
distinct, and evident, even while their arguments 
stripped off many a layer of hypothetical assump- 
tion which their great predecessor had left un- 
touched. No one has more clearly stated the 
aims of the critical philosopher than Locke, in a 
passage of the famous " Essay concerning Human 
Understanding," which, perhaps, I ought to 
assume to be well known to all English readers, 
but which so probably is unknown to this full- 
crammed and much-examined generation that I 
venture to cite it : 

" If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding I 
can discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what 
things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they 
fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy 
mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things 
exceeding his comprehension : to stop when it is at the utmost 
extent of its tether ; and to sit down in quiet ignorance of 
those things which, upon examination, are proved to be 
beyond the reach of our capacities. We should not then, 
perhaps, be so forward, out of an affectation of universal 
knowledge, to raise questions and perplex ourselves and others 
with disputes about things to which our understandings are 
not suited, and of which we cannot frame in our minds any 
clear and distinct perception, or whereof (as it has, perhaps, 
too often happened) we have not any notion at all . . . . 
Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads and 



I OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 67 

employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if 
they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution and 
throw away the blessings their hands are filled with because 
they are not big enough to grasp everything. We shall not 
have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, 
if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us : for 
of that they are very capable : and it will be an unpardonable, 
as well as a childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advan- 
tages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends 
for which it was given us, because there are some things that 
are set out of reach of it. It will be no excuse to an idle and 
untoward servant who would not attend to his business by 
candlelight, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The 
candle that is set up in us shines bright enough for all our 
purposes .... Our business here is not to know all 
things, but those which concern our conduct." * 

Hume develops the same fundamental con- 
ception in a somewhat different way, and with 
a more definite indication of the practical benefits 
which may be expected from a critical philosophy. 
The first and second parts of the twelfth section 
of the "Inquiry" are devoted to a condemnation 
of excessive scepticism, or Pyrrhonism, with which 
Hume couples a caricature of the Cartesian 
doubt ; but, in the third part, a certain " mitigated 
scepticism" is recommended and adopted, under 
the title of " academical philosophy." After 
pointing out that a knowledge of the infirmities 
of the human understanding, even in its most per- 
fect state, and when most accurate and cautious 

1 Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding , Book 
I. chap i. §§ 4, 5, 6. 



68 HUME i 

in its determinations, is the best check upon the 
tendency to dogmatism, Hume continues : — 

" Another species of mitigated scepticism, which may be of 
advantage to mankind, and which may be the natural result of 
the Pyrrhonian doubts and scruples, is the limitation of our 
inquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow 
capacity of human understanding. The imagination of man 
is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and 
extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most 
distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects 
which custom has rendered too familiar to it. A correct 
judgment observes a contrary method, and, avoiding all dis- 
tant and high inquiries, confines itself to common life, and to 
such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience ; 
leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets 
and orators, or to the arts of priests and politicians. To 
bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more 
serviceable than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force 
of the Pyrrhonian doubt, and of the impossibility that any- 
thing but the strong power of natural instinct could free us 
from it. Those who have a propensity to philosophy will 
still continue their researches ; because they reflect, that, be- 
sides the immediate pleasure attending such an occupation, 
philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of com- 
mon life, methodised and corrected. But they will never be 
tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider 
the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their 
narrow reach and their inaccurate operations. While we cannot 
give a satisfactory reason why we believe, after a thousand 
experiments, that a stone will fall or fire burn ; can we ever satisfy 
ourselves concerning any determination which we may form 
with regard to the origin of worlds and the situation of nature 
from and to eternity ?" (IV. pp. 189—90.) 

But further, it is the business of criticism not 
only to keep watch over the vagaries of phil- 



I OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 69 

osophy, but to do the duty of police in the whole 
world of thought. Wherever it espies sophistry 
or superstition they are to be bidden to stand ; 
nay, they are to be followed to their very dens 
and there apprehended and exterminated, as 
Othello smothered Desdemona, "else she'll betray 
more men," 

Hume warms into eloquence as he sets forth 
the labours meet for the strength and the courage 
of the Hercules of " mitigated scepticism." 

"Here, indeed, lies the justest and most plausible objection 
against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not 
properly a science, but arise either from the fruitless efforts 
of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly 
inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular 
superstitions, which, being unable to defend themselves on fair 
ground, raise these entangling brambles to cover and protect 
their weakness. Chased from the open country, these robbers 
fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every 
unguarded avenue of the mind and overwhelm it with religious 
fears and prejudices. The stoutest antagonist, if he remits his 
watch a moment, is oppressed ; and many, through cowardice 
and folly, open the gates to the enemies, and willingly 
receive them with reverence and submission as their legal 
sovereigns. 

" But is this a sufficient reason why philosophers should 
desist from such researches and leave superstition still in 
possession of her retreat ? Is it not proper to draw an opposite 
conclusion, and perceive the necessity of carrying the war into 

the most secret recesses of the enemy ? The only 

method of freeing learning at once from these abstruse questions, 
is to inquire seriously into the nature of human understanding, 
and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, 
that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse 



70 - HUME I 

subjects. We must submit to this fatigue, in order to live at 
ease ever after ; and must cultivate true metaphysics with some 
care, in order to destroy the false and adulterated." — (IV. pp. 
10, 11.) 

Near a century and a half has elapsed since 
these brave words were shaped by David Hume's 
pen; and the business of carrying the war into 
the enemy's camp has gone on but slowly. Like 
other campaigns, it long languished for want of a 
good base of operations. But since physical 
science, in the course of the last fifty years, has 
brought to the front an inexhaustible supply of 
heavy artillery of a new pattern, warranted to 
drive solid bolts of fact through the thickest 
skulls, things are looking better ; though hardly 
more than the first faint flutterings of the dawn 
of the happy day, when superstition and false 
metaphysics shall be no more and reasonable folks 
may " live at ease," are as yet discernible by the 
enfants perdus of the outposts. 

If, in thus conceiving the object and the 
limitations of philosophy, Hume shows himself 
the spiritual child and continuator of the work of 
Locke, he appears no less plainly as the parent of 
Kant and as the protagonist of that more modern 
way of thinking, which has been called " agnosti- 
cism," from its profession of an incapacity to 
discover the indispensable conditions of either 
positive or negative knowledge, in many pro- 
positions, respecting which, not only the vulgar, 



I OBJECT AND SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 71 

but philosophers of the more sanguine sort, revel 
in the luxury of unqualified assurance. 

The aim of the " Kritik der reinen Vernunft " 
is essentially the same as that of the " Treatise of 
Human Nature/' by which indeed Kant was led 
to develop that " critical philosophy " with which 
his name and fame are indissolubly bound up : 
and, if the details of Kant's criticism differ from 
those of Hume, they coincide with them in their 
main result, which is the limitation of all know- 
ledge of reality to the world of phenomena re- 
vealed to us by experience. 

The philosopher of Konigsberg epitomises the 
philosopher of Ninewells when he thus sums up 
the uses of philosophy :— 

" The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of 
pure reason is, after all, merely negative, since it serves, not as 
an organon for the enlargement [of knowledge], but as a discip- 
line for its delimitation : and instead of discovering truth, has 
only the modest merit of preventing error." 1 

1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Ed. Hartenstein, p. 256. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 

In the language of common life, the " mind ' is 
spoken of as an entity, independent of the body, 
though resident in and closely connected with it, 
and endowed with numerous " faculties," such as 
sensibility, understanding, memory, volition, which 
stand in the same relation to the mind as the 
organs do to the body, and perform the functions 
of feeling, reasoning, remembering, and willing. 
Of these functions, some, such as sensation, are 
supposed to be merely passive — that is, they are 
called into existence by impressions, made upon 
the sensitive faculty by a material world of real 
objects, of which our sensations are supposed to 
give us pictures ; others, such as the memory and 
the reasoning faculty, are considered to be partly 
passive and partly active ; while volition is held 
to be potentially, if not always actually, a spon- 
taneous activity. 



II THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 73 

The popular classification and terminology of 
the phenomena of consciousness, however, are by 
no means the first crude conceptions suggested by 
common sense, but rather a legacy, and, in many 
respects, a sufficiently damnosa Jmreditas, of 
ancient philosophy, more or less leavened by 
theology ; which has incorporated itself with the 
common thought of later times, as the vices of the 
aristocracy of one age become those of the mob in 
the next. Very little attention to what passes in 
the mind is* sufficient to show, that these con- 
ceptions involve assumptions of an extremely 
hypothetical character. And the first business 
of the student of psychology is to get rid of such 
prepossessions; to form conceptions of mental 
phenomena as they are given us by observation, 
without any hypothetical admixture, or with only 
so much as is definitely recognised and held 
subject to confirmation or otherwise ; to classify 
these phenomena according to their clearly 
recognisable characters; and to adopt a nomen- 
clature which suggests nothing beyond the results 
of observation. Thus chastened, observation of 
the mind makes us acquainted with nothing but 
certain events, facts, or phenomena (whichever 
name be preferred) which pass over the inward 
field of view in rapid and, as it may appear on 
careless inspection, in disorderly succession, like 
the shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope. To all 
these mental phenomena, or states of our 



74 HUME 



II 



consciousness, 1 Descartes gave the name of 
"thoughts/' 2 while Locke and Berkeley termed 
them " ideas." Hume, regarding this as an im- 
proper use of the word " idea," for which he 
proposes another employment, gives the general 
name of " perceptions " to all states of conscious- 
ness. Thus, whatever other signification we may 
see reason to attach to the word " mind," it is cer- 
tain that it is a name which is employed to denote 
a series of perceptions; just as the word "tune," 
whatever else it may mean, denotes, in the first 
place, a succession of musical notes. Hume, 
indeed, goes further than others when he says 
that — 

" "What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of 
different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and 
supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity 
and identity. "—(I. p. 268.) 

With this " nothing but," however, he obviously 
falls into the primal and perennial error of 
philosophical speculators — dogmatising from nega- 
tive arguments. He may be right or wrong ; but 

1 " Consciousnesses " would be a better name, but it is 
awkward. I have elsewhere proposed psychoses as a substantive 
name for mental phenomena. 

2 As this has been denied, it may be as well to give 
Descartes's words : Par le mot de penser, j'entends tout ce 
que se fait dans nous de telle sorte que nous l'apercevons 
immediatement par nousmemes : c'est pourquoi non-seulement 
entendre, vouloir, imaginer, mais aussi sentir, c'est le meme 
chose ici que penser." — Principes de Philosophic Ed. Cousin, 57. 

"Toutes les proprieties que nous trouvons en la chose qui 
pense ne sont que des facons differentes de penser." — Ibid. 96. 



II THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 75 

the most he, or anybody else, can prove in favour 
of his conclusion is, that we know nothing more 
of the mind than that it is a series of perceptions. 
Whether there is something in the mind that 
lies beyond the reach of observation ; or whether 
perceptions themselves are the products of some- 
thing which can be observed and which is not 
mind ; are questions which can in nowise be 
settled by direct observation. Elsewhere, the 
objectionable hypothetical element of the defini- 
tion of mind is less prominent :— 

" The true idea of the human mind is to consider it as a 
system of different perceptions, or different existences, which 
are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and 
mutually produce, destroy, influence and modify each other. . . . 
In this respect I cannot compare the soul more properly to 
anything than a republic or commonwealth, in which the 
several members are united by the reciprocal ties of government 
and surbordination, and give rise to other persons who propa- 
gate the same republic in the incessant changes of its parts."— 
(I. p. 331). 

But, leaving the question of the proper defini- 
tion of mind open for the present, it is further a 
matter of direct observation, that, when we take 
a general survey of all our perceptions or states of 
consciousness, they naturally fall into sundry 
groups or classes. Of these classes, two are 
distinguished by Hume as of primary importance, 
All " perceptions," he says, are either " Impres- 
sions " or " Ideas! 9 

Under " impressions " he includes " all our more 



76 HUME 



II 



lively perceptions, when we hear, see, feel, love, 
or will ; " in other words. " all our sensations, 
passions, and emotions, as they make their first 
appearance in the soul" (I. p. 15). 

" Ideas," on the other hand, are the faint images 
of impressions in thinking and reasoning, or of 
antecedent ideas. 

Both impressions and ideas may be either 
simple, when they are incapable of further 
analysis, or complex, when they may be resolved 
into simpler constituents. All simple ideas are 
exact copies of impressions ; but, in complex ideas, 
the arrangement of simple constituents may be 
different from that of the impressions of which 
those simple ideas are copies. 

Thus the colours red and blue and the odour of 
a rose, are simple impressions ; while the ideas of 
blue, of red, and of rose-odour are simple copies of 
these impressions. But a red rose gives us a 
complex impression, capable of resolution into the 
simple impressions of red colour, rose-scent, and 
numerous others ; and we may have a complex 
idea, which is an accurate, though faint, copy of 
this complex impression. Once in possession of 
the ideas of a red rose and of the colour blue, we 
may, in imagination, substitute blue for red ; and 
thus obtain a complex idea of a blue rose, which 
is not an actual copy of any complex impression, 
though all its elements are such copies. 

Hume has been criticised for making the 



II THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 77 

distinction of impressions and ideas to depend 
upon their relative strength or vivacity. Yet it 
would be hard to point out any other character by 
which the things signified can be distinguished. 
Any one who has paid attention to the curious 
subject of what are called " subjective sensations" 
will be familiar with examples of the extreme 
difficulty which sometimes attends the discrimi- 
nation of ideas of sensation from impressions of 
sensation, when the ideas are very vivid, or the 
impressions are faint. Who has not " fancied " he 
heard a noise ; or has not explained inattention to 
a real sound by saying, " I thought it was nothing 
but my fancy " ? Even healthy persons are much 
more liable to both visual and auditory spectra — 
that is, ideas of vision and sound so vivid that 
they are taken for new impressions — than is 
commonly supposed ; and, in some diseased states, 
ideas of sensible objects may assume all the vivid- 
ness of reality. 

If ideas are nothing but copies of impressions, 
arranged, either in the same order as that of the 
impressions from which they are derived, or in a 
different order, it follows that the ultimate 
analysis of the contents of the mind turns upon 
that of the impressions. According to Hume, 
these are of two kinds : either they are impres- 
sions of sensation, or they are impressions of 
reflection. The former are those afforded by the 
five senses, together with pleasure and pain. The 



78 HUME 



II 



latter are the passions or the emotions (which 
Hume employs as equivalent terms). Thus the 
elementary states of consciousness, the raw 
materials of knowledge, so to speak, are either 
sensations or emotions ; and whatever we discover 
in the mind, beyond these elementary states of 
consciousness, results from the combinations and 
the metamorphoses which they undergo. 

It is not a little strange that a thinker of 
Hume's capacity should have been satisfied with 
the results of a psychological analysis which 
regards some obvious compounds as elements, 
while it omits altogether a most important class 
of elementary states. 

With respect to the former point, Spinoza's 
masterly examination of the Passions in the third 
part of the " Ethics " should have been known to 
Hume. 1 But, if he had been acquainted with 
that wonderful piece of psychological anatomy, he 
would have learned that the emotions and 
passions are all complex states, arising from the 
close association of ideas of pleasure or pain with 
other ideas ; and, indeed, without going to 
Spinoza, his own acute discussion of the passions 
leads to the same result, 2 and is wholly inconsistent 

1 On the whole, it is pleasant to find satisfactory evidence 
that Hume knew nothing of the works of Spinoza ; for the 
invariably abusive manner in which he refers to that type of the 
philosophic hero is only to be excused, if it is to be excused, by 
sheer ignorance of his life and work. 

2 For example, in discussing pride and humility, Hume says : — 
" According as our idea of ourselves is more or less advantageous, 



II THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 79 

with his classification of those mental states among 
the primary uncompounded materials of conscious- 
ness. 

If Hume's " impressions of reflection 1 are 
excluded from among the primary elements of 
consciousness, nothing is left but the impres- 
sions afforded by the five senses, with pleasure 
and pain. Putting aside the muscular sense, 
which had not come into view in Hume's time, 
the questions arise whether these are all the 
simple undecomposable materials of thought ? 
or whether others exist of which Hume takes no 
cognizance ? 

Kant answered the latter question in the 
affirmative, in the " Kritik der reinen Vernunft," 
and thereby made one of the greatest advances 
ever effected in philosophy; though it must be 
confessed that the German philosophers exposi- 
tion of his views is so perplexed in style, so 
burdened with the weight of a cumbrous and 
uncouth scholasticism, that it is easy to confound 
the unessential parts of his system with those 



we feel either of these opposite affections, and are elated by pride 
or dejected with humility . . . when self enters not into the 
consideration there is no room either for pride or humility." 
That is, pride is pleasure, and humility is pain, associated with 
certain conceptions of one's self ; or as Spinoza puts it : — 
"Superbia est de se prse amore sui plus justo sentire" ("amor" 
being "lsetitia concomitante idea causae externse") ; and 
" Humilitas est tristitia orta ex eo quod homo suam impotentiani 
sive imbecillitatem contemplating " 



80 HUME 



II 



which are of profound importance. His baggage 
train is bigger than his army, and the student 
who attacks him is too often led to suspect he has 
won a position when he has only captured a mob 
of useless camp-followers. 

In his " Principles of Psychology," Mr. Herbert 
Spencer appears to me to have brought out the 
essential truth which underlies Kant's doctrine in 
a far clearer manner than any one else ; but, for 
the purpose of the present summary view of 
Hume's philosophy, it must suffice if I state the 
matter in my own way, giving the broad outlines, 
without entering into the details of a large and 
difficult discussion. 

When a red light flashes across the field of 
vision, there arises in the mind an " impression of 
sensation " — which we call red. It appears to me 
that this sensation, red, is a something which may 
exist altogether independently of any other im- 
pression, or idea, as an individual existence. It 
is perfectly conceivable that a sentient being 
should have no sense but vision, and that he 
should have spent his existence in absolute dark- 
ness, with the exception of one solitary flash of 
red light. That momentary illumination would 
suffice to give him the impression under consider- 
ation. The whole content of his consciousness 
might be that impression ; and, if he were en- 
doAved with memory, its idea. 






II THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 81 

Such being the state of affairs, suppose a 
second flash of red light to follow the first. If 
there were no memory of the latter, the state of 
the mind on the second occasion would simply be 
a repetition of that which occurred before. There 
would be merely another impression. 

But suppose memory to exist, and that an idea 
of the first impression is generated ; then, if the 
supposed sentient being were like ourselves, 
there might arise in his mind two altogether new 
impressions. The one is the feeling of the 
succession of the two impressions, the other is the 
feeling of their similarity. 

Yet a third case is conceivable. Suppose 
two flashes of red light to occur together, then a 
third feeling might arise which is neither succes- 
sion nor similarity, but that which we call co- 
existence. 

These feelings, or their contraries, are the 
foundation of everything that we call a relation. 
They are no more capable of being described than 
sensations are ; and, as it appears to me, they 
are as little susceptible of analysis into simpler 
elements. Like simple tastes and smells, or 
feelings of pleasure and pain, they are ultimate 
irresolvable facts of conscious experience ; and, if 
we follow the principle of Hume's nomenclature, 
they must be called impressions of relation. But 
it must be remembered, that they differ from the 

149 



82 HUME 



II 



other impressions, in requiring the pre-existence 
of at least two of the latter. Though devoid of 
the slightest resemblance to the other impressions, 
they are, in a manner, generated by them. In 
fact, we may regard them as a kind of impressions 
of impressions ; or as the sensations of an inner 
sense, which takes cognizance of the materials 
furnished to it by the outer senses. 

Hume failed as completely as his predecessors 
had done to recognise the elementary character of 
impressions of relation; and, when he discusses 
relations, he falls into a chaos of confusion and 
self-contradiction. 

In the " Treatise," for example, (Book I., § iv.) 
resemblance, contiguity in time and space, and 
cause and effect, are said to be the "uniting 
principles among ideas," "the bond of union" 
or " associating quality by which one idea 
naturally introduces another." Hume affirms 
that — 

" These qualities produce an association among ideas, and 
upon the appearance of one idea naturally introduce another. " 
They are " the principles of union or cohesion among our 
simple ideas, and, in the imagination, supply the place of that 
inseparable connection by which they are united in our memory. 
Here is a kind of attraction, which, in the mental world, will be 
found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to 
show itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are 
everywhere conspicuous ; but, as to its causes they are mostly 
unknown, and must be resolved into original qualities of human 
nature, which I pretend not to explain."— (I. p. 29.) 



II THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 88 

And at the end of this section Hume goes on 
to say — 

"Amongst the effects of this union or association of ideas 
there are none more remarkable than those complex ideas which 
are the common subjects of our thought and reasoning, and 
generally arise from some principle of union among our simple 
ideas. These complex ideas may be resolved into relations, 
modes, and substances" — {Ibid.) 

In the next section, which is devoted to 
Relations, they are spoken of as qualities "by 
which two ideas are connected together in the 
imagination," or " which make objects admit of 
comparison/' and seven kinds of relation are 
enumerated, namely, resemblance, identity, space 
and time, quantity or number, degrees of quality, 
contrariety, and cause and effect. 

To the reader of Hume, whose conceptions are 
usually so clear, definite, and consistent, it is as 
unsatisfactory as it is surprising to meet with *so 
much questionable and obscure phraseology in a 
small space. One and the same thing, for 
example, resemblance, is first called a " quality 
of an idea," and secondly a " complex idea." 
Surely it cannot be both. Ideas which have the 
qualities of " resemblance, contiguity, and cause 
and effect," are said to " attract one another ' 
(save the* mark !), and so become associated ; 
though, in a subsequent part of the " Treatise," 
Hume's great effort is to prove that the relation 
of cause and effect is a particular case of the 



84 HUME II 

process of association; that is to say, is a result 
of the process of which it is supposed to be the 
cause. Moreover, since, as Hume is never weary 
of reminding his readers, there is nothing in ideas 
save copies of impressions, the qualities of re- 
semblance, contiguity, and so on, in the idea, must 
have existed in the impression of which that idea 
is a copy ; and therefore they must be either 
sensations or emotions — from both of which 
classes they are excluded. 

In fact, in one place, Hume himself has an 
insight into the real nature of relations. Speaking 
of equality, in the sense of a relation of quantity, 
he says — 

" Since equality is a relation, it is not, strictly speaking, a 
property in the figures themselves, but arises merely from the 
comparison which the mind makes between them." — (I. p. 
70.) 

That is to say, when two impressions of equal 
figures are present, there arises in the mind a 
tertium quid, which is the perception of equality. 
On his own principles, Hume should therefore 
have placed this " perception " among the ideas of 
reflection. However, as we have seen, he ex- 
pressly excludes everything but the emotions and 
the passions from this group. 

It is necessary therefore to amend Hume's 
primary " geography of the mind " by the exci- 
sion of one territory and the addition of another; 



II THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 85 

and the elementary states of consciousness under 
consideration will stand thus : — 

A. Impressions. 

A. Sensations of 

a. Smell. 

b. Taste. 

c. Hearing. 

d. Sight. 

e. Touch. 

/. Resistance (the muscular sense). 

B. Pleasure and Pain. 
C Relations. 

a. Co-existence. 

&. Succession. 

c. Similarity and dissimilarity. 

B. Ideas. 

Copies, or reproductions in memory, of the fore- 
going. 

And now the question arises, whether any, and 
if so what, portion of these contents of the mind 
are to be termed " knowledge ? " 

According to Locke, " Knowledge is the per- 
ception of the agreement or disagreement of two 
ideas ; ' and Hume, though he does not say so in 
so many words, tacitly accepts the definition. It 
follows, that neither simple sensation, nor simple 
emotion, constitutes knowledge ; but that, when 



86 HUME II 

impressions of relation are added to these im- 
pressions, or their ideas, knowledge arises ; and 
that all knowledge is the knowledge of likenesses 
and unlikenesses, co-existences and successions. 

It really matters very little in what sense terms 
are used, so long as the same meaning is always 
rigidly attached to them; and, therefore, it is 
hardly worth while to quarrel with this generally 
accepted, though very arbitrary, limitation of the 
signification of " knowledge." But, on the face of 
the matter, it is not obvious why the impression 
we call a relation should have a better claim to 
the title of knowledge, than that which we call a 
sensation or an emotion ; and the restriction has 
this unfortunate result, that it excludes all the most 
intense states of consciousness from any claim to 
the title of " knowledge/' 

For example, on this view, pain, so violent and 
absorbing as to exclude all other forms of con- 
sciousness, is not knowledge ; but becomes a part of 
knowledge the moment we think of it in relation to 
another pain, or to some other mental phenomenon. 
Surely this is somewhat inconvenient, for there is 
only a verbal difference between having a sensa- 
tion and knowing one has it : they are simply 
two phrases for the same mental state. 

But the " pure metaphysicians ' make great 
capital out of the ambiguity. For, starting with 
the assumption that all knowledge is the per- 
ception of relations, and finding themselves like 



II 



THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND 87 



mere common-sense folks, very much disposed to 
call sensation knowledge, they at once gratify that 
disposition and save their consistency, by declaring 
that even the simplest act of sensation contains, 
two terms and a relation — the sensitive subject 
the sensigenous object, and that masterful entity, 
the Ego. From which great triad, as from a 
gnostic Trinity, emanates an endless procession of 
other logical shadows and all the Fata Morgana of 
philosophical dreamland. . 



CHAPTER III 

THE OEIGIN OF THE IMPEESSIONS 

Admitting that the sensations, the feelings of 
pleasure and pain, and those of relation, are the 
primary irresolvable states of consciousness, two 
further lines of investigation present themselves. 
The one leads us to seek the origin of these 
" impressions : ' the other, to inquire into the 
nature of the steps by which they become 
metamorphosed into those compound states of 
consciousness, which so largely enter into our 
ordinary trains of thought. 

With respect to the origin of impressions of sen- 
sation, Hume is not quite consistent with himself. 
In one place (I. p. 117) he says, that it is im- 
possible to decide " whether they arise immediately 
from the object, or are produced by the creative 
power of the mind, or are derived from the Author 
of our being," thereby implying that realism and 
idealism are equally probable hypotheses. But, 
in fact, after the demonstration by Descartes, that 



Ill THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 89 

the immediate antecedents of sensations are 
changes in the nervous system, with which our 
feelings have no sort of resemblance, the hy- 
pothesis that sensations " arise immediately from 
the object " was out of court ; and that Hume fully 
admitted the Cartesian doctrine is apparent when 
he says (I. p. 272) : — 

"All our perceptions are dependent on our organs and the 
disposition of our nerves and animal spirits. " 

And again, though in relation to another question, 
he observes : — 

"There are three different kinds of impressions conveyed 
by the senses. The first are those of the figure, bulk, motion, 
and solidity of bodies. The second those of colours, tastes, 
smells, sounds, heat, and cold. The third are the pains and 
pleasures that arise from the application of objects to our 
bodies, as by the cutting of our flesh with steel, and such like. 
Both philosophers and the vulgar suppose the first of these to 
have a distinct continued existence. The vulgar only regard 
the second as on the same footing. Both philosophers and 
the vulgar again esteem the third to be merely perceptions, 
and consequently interrupted and dependent beings. 

"Now 'tis evident that, whatever may be our philosophical 
opinion, colour, sounds, heat, and cold, as far as appears to 
the senses, exist after the same manner with motion and 
solidity ; and that the difference we make between them, in 
this respect, arises not from the mere perception. So strong 
is the prejudice for the distinct continued existence of the 
former qualities, that when the contrary opinion is advanced 
by modern philosophers, people imagine they can almost 
refute it from their reason and experience, and that their very 
senses contradict this philosophy. 'Tis also evident that 
colours, sounds, &c, are originally on the same footing with 
the pain that arises from steel, and pleasure that proceeds from 



90 HUME 



III 



a fire ; and that the difference betwixt them is founded neither 
on perception nor reason, but on the imagination. For as they 
are confessed to be, both of them, nothing but perceptions 
arising from the particular configurations and motions of the 
parts of the body, wherein possibly can their difference consist ? 
Upon the whole then, we may conclude that, as far as the senses 
are judges all perceptions are the same in the manner of their 
existence."— (I. p. 250, 251.) 

The last words of this passage are as much 
Berkeley's as Hume's. But, instead of following 
Berkeley in his deductions from the position thus 
laid down, Hume, as the preceding citation 
shows, fully adopted the conclusion to which all 
thai/ we know of psychological physiology tends, 
that the origin of the elements of consciousness, 
no less than that of all its other states, is to be 
sought in bodily changes, the seat of which can 
only be placed in the brain. And, as Locke had 
already done with less effect, he states and refutes 
the arguments commonly brought against the 
possibility of a causal connection between the 
modes of motion of the cerebral substance and 
states of consciousness, with great clearness :— 

" From these hypotheses concerning the substance and local 
conjunction of our perceptions we may pass to another, which 
is more intelligible than the former, and more important than 
the latter, viz. concerning the cause of our perceptions. Matter 
and motion, 'tis commonly said in the schools, however varied, 
are still matter and motion, and produce only a difference in 
the position and situation of objects. Divide a body as often as 
you please, 'tis still body. Place it in any figure, nothing ever 
results but figure, or the relation of parts. Move it in any 



HI THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 91 

manner, yon still find motion or a change of relation. 'Tis 
absurd to imagine that motion in a circle, for instance, should 
be nothing but merely motion in a circle ; while motion in 
another direction, as in an ellipse, should also be a passion 
or moral reflection ; that the shocking of two globular parti- 
cles should become a sensation of pain, and that the meeting 
of the triangular ones should afford a pleasure. Now as these 
different shocks and variations and mixtures are the only 
changes of which matter is susceptible, and as these never 
afford us any idea of thought or perception, 'tis concluded to 
be impossible, that thought can ever be caused by matter. 

"Few have been able to withstand the seeming evidence of 
this argument ; and yet nothing in the world is more easy 
than to refute it. We need only reflect upon what has been 
proved at large, that we are never sensible of any connection 
between causes and effects, and that 'tis only by our expe- 
rience of their constant conjunction we can arrive at any 
knowledge of this relation. Now, as all objects which are 
not contrary are susceptible of a constant conjunction, and as 
no real objects are contrary, I have inferred from these 
principles (Part III. § 15) that, to consider the matter a priori, 
anything may produce anything, and that we shall never dis- 
cover a reason why any object may or may not be the cause of 
any other, however great, or however little, the resemblance 
may be betwixt them. This evidently destroys the precedent 
reasoning, concerning the cause of thought or perception. 
For though there appear no manner of connection betwixt 
motion and thought, the case is the same with all other causes 
and effects. Place one body of a pound weight on one end 
of a lever, and another body of the same weight on the other 
end ; you will never find in these bodies any principle of 
motion dependent on their distance from the centre, more than 
of thought and perception. If you pretend, therefore, to 
prove, a priori, that such a position of bodies can never cause 
thought, because, turn it which way you will, it is nothing but 
a position of bodies : you must, by the same course of reason- 
ing, conclude that it can never produce motion, since there is 
no more apparent connection in the one than in the other. 



92 HUME III 

But, as this latter conclusion is contrary to evident experience, 
and as 'tis possible we may have a like experience in the opera- 
tions of the mind, and may perceive a constant conjunction of 
thought and motion, you reason too hastily when, from the 
mere consideration of the ideas, you conclude that 'tis impossible 
motion can ever produce thought, or a different position of 
parts give rise to a different passion or reflection. Nay, 'tis not 
only possible we may have such an experience, but 'tis certain 
we have it ; since every one may perceive that the different 
dispositions of his body change his thoughts and sentiments. 
And should it be said that this depends on the union of soul 
and body, I would answer, that we must separate the question 
concerning the substance of the mind from that concerning the 
cause of its thought ; and that, confining ourselves to the latter 
question, we find, by the comparing their ideas, that thought 
and motion are different from each other, and by experience, 
that they are constantly united ; which, being all the circum- 
stances that enter into the idea of cause and effect, when applied 
to the operations of matter, we may certainly conclude that 
motion may be, and actually is, the cause of thought and per- 
ception."— (I. pp. 314—316.) 

The upshot of all this is, that the " collection of 
perceptions," which constitutes the mind, is really 
a system of effects, the causes of which are to be 
sought in antecedent changes of the matter of the 
brain, just as the "collection of motions," which 
we call flying, is a system of effects, the causes of 
which are to be sought in the modes of motion of 
the matter of the muscles of the wings. 

Hume, however, treats of this important topic 
only incidentally. He seems to have had very little 
acquaintance even with such physiology as was 
current in his time. At least, the only passage of 
his works, bearing on this subject, with which I 



Ill 



THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 93 



am acquainted, contains nothing but a very odd 
version of the physiological views of Descartes : — 

"When I received the relations of resemblance, contiguity, 
and causation, as principles of union among ideas, without 
examining into their causes, 'twas more in prosecution of my 
first maxim, that we must in the end rest contented with ex- 
perience, than for want of something specious and plausible 
which I might have displayed on that subject. 'Twould have 
been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, 
and have shown why, upon our conception of any idea, the 
animal spirits run into all the contiguous traces and rouse up 
the other ideas that are related to it. But though I have 
neglected any advantage which I might have drawn from this 
topic in explaining the relations of ideas, I am afraid I must 
here have recourse to it, in order to account for the mistakes 
that arise from these relations. I shall therefore observe, that 
as the mind is endowed with the power of exciting any idea it 
pleases ; whenever it despatches the spirits into that region of 
the brain in which the idea is placed ; these spirits always 
excite the idea, when they run precisely into the proper traces 
and rummage that cell which belongs to the idea. But as their 
motion is seldom direct, and naturally turns a little to the one 
side or to the other ; for this reason the animal spirits, falling 
into the contiguous traces, present other related ideas, in lieu of 
that which the mind desired at first to survey. This change we 
are not always sensible of ; but continuing still the same train 
of thought, make use of the related idea which is presented to 
us and employ it in our reasonings, as if it were the same with 
what we demanded. This is the cause of many mistakes 
and sophisms in philosophy ; as will naturally be imagined, 
and as it would be easy to show, if there was occasion." — (I. 
p. 88.) 

Perhaps it is as well for Hume's fame that the 
occasion for further physiological speculations of 
this sort did not arise. But while admitting the 



94 HUME 



III 



crudity of his notions and the strangeness of the 
language in which they are couched, it must in 
justice be remembered, that what are now known 
as the elements of the physiology of the nervous 
system were hardly dreamed of in the first half of 
the eighteenth century ; and, as a further set off 
to Hume's credit, it must be noted that he grasped 
the fundamental truth, that the key to the com- 
prehension of mental operations lies in the study 
of the molecular changes of the nervous apparatus 
by which they are originated. 

Surely no one who is cognisant of the facts of 
the case, nowadays, doubts that the roots of 
psychology lie in the physiology of the nervous 
system. What we call the operations of the mind 
are functions of the brain, and the materials of 
consciousness are products of cerebral activity. 
Cabanis may have made use of crude and mis- 
leading phraseology when he said that the brain 
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile ; but 
the conception which that much-abused phrase 
embodies is, nevertheless, far more consistent 
with fact than, the popular notion that the mind 
is a metaphysical entity seated in the head, but as 
independent of the brain as a telegraph operator 
is of his instrument. 

It is hardly necessary to point out that the 
doctrine just laid down is what is commonly 
called materialism. In fact, I am not sure that 
the adjective " crass," which appears to have a 



HI THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 95 

special charm for rhetorical sciolists, would not 
be applied to it. But it is, nevertheless, true 
that the doctrine contains nothing inconsistent 
with the purest idealism. For, as Hume remarks 
(as indeed Descartes had observed long before) : — 

"Tis not our body we perceive when we regard our limbs 
and members, but certain impressions which enter by the 
senses ; so that the ascribing a real and corporeal existence to 
these impressions, or to their objects, is an act of the mind as 
difficult to explain as that [the external existence of objects] 
which we examine at present." — (I. p. 249.) 

Therefore, if we analyse the proposition that all 
mental phenomena are the effects or products of 
material phenomena, all that it means amounts to 
this : that whenever those states of consciousness 
which we call sensation, or emotion, or thought, 
come into existence, complete investigation will 
show good reason for the belief that they are 
preceded by those other phenomena of conscious- 
ness to which we give the names of matter and 
motion. All material changes appear, in the long 
run, to be modes of motion ; but our knowledge of 
motion is nothing but that of a change in the 
place and order of our sensations; just as our 
knowledge of matter is restricted to those feelings 
of which we assume it to be the cause. 

It has already been pointed out, that Hume 
must have admitted, and in fact does admit, the 
possibility that the mind is a Leibnitzian monad, 
or a Fichtean world-generating Ego, the universe 



96 HUME 



III 



of things being merely the picture produced by 
the evolution of the phenomena of consciousness. 
For any demonstration that can be given to the 
contrary effect, the "collection of perceptions' 
which makes up our consciousness maybe an orderly 
phantasmagoria generated by the Ego, unfolding 
its successive scenes on the background of the 
abyss of nothingness ; as a firework, which is but 
cunningly arranged combustibles, grows from a 
spark into a coruscation, and from a coruscation 
into figures, and words, and cascades of devouring 
fire, and then vanishes into the darkness of the 
night. 

On the other hand, it must no less readily be 
allowed that, for anything that can be proved to 
the contrary, there may be a real something which 
is the cause of all our impressions ; that sensa- 
tions, though not likenesses, are symbols of that 
something ; and that the part of that something, 
which we call the nervous system, is an apparatus 
for supplying us with a sort of algebra of fact, 
based on those symbols. A brain may be the 
machinery by which the material universe 
becomes conscious of itself. But it is important 
to notice that, even if this conception of the 
universe and of the relation of consciousness to its 
other components should be true, we should, 
nevertheless, be still bound by the limits of 
thought, still unable to refute the arguments of 
pure idealism. The more completely the material- 



Ill THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 97 

istic position is admitted, the easier is it to show- 
that the idealistic position is unassailable, if the 
idealist confines himself within the limits of posi- 
tive knowledge. 

Hume deals with the questions whether all our 
ideas are derived from experience, or whether, on 
the contrary, more or fewer of them are innate, 
which so much exercised the mind of Locke, after a 
somewhat summary fashion, in a note to the 
second section of the " Inquiry " : — 

" It is probable that no more was meant by those who denied 
innate ideas, than that all ideas were copies of our impressions ; 
though it must be confessed that the terms which they em- 
ployed were not chosen with such caution, nor so exactly 
defined, as to prevent all mistakes about their doctrine. For 
what is meant by innate ? If innate be equivalent to natural, 
then all the perceptions and ideas of the mind must be allowed 
to be innate or natural, in whatever sense we take the latter 
word, whether in opposition to what is uncommon, artificial, or 
miraculous. If by innate be meant contemporary with our 
birth, the dispute seems to be frivolous ; nor is it worth while 
to inquire at what time thinking begins, whether before, at, or 
after our birth. Again, the word idea seems to be commonly 
taken in a very loose sense by Locke and others, as standing for 
any of our perceptions, our sensations and passions, as well as 
thoughts. Now in this sense I should desire to know what can 
be meant by asserting that self-love, or resentment of injuries, 
or the passion between the sexes is not innate ? 

" But admitting these terms, impressions and ideas, in the 
sense above explained, and understanding by innate what is 
original or copied from no precedent perception, then we may 
assert that all our impressions are innate, and our ideas not 
innate." 

It would seem that Hume did not think it 
worth while to acquire a comprehension of the 

150 



98 HUME III 

real points at issue in the controversy which he 
thus carelessly dismisses. 

Yet Descartes has denned what he means by 
innate ideas with so much precision, that miscon- 
ception ought to have been impossible. He says 
that, when he speaks of an idea being " innate/' 
he means that it exists potentially in the mind, 
before it is actually called into existence by what- 
ever is its appropriate exciting cause. 

"I have never either thought or said," he writes, "that the 
mind has any need of innate ideas [idees naturelles] which are 
anything distinct from its faculty of thinking. But it is true 
that observing that there are certain thoughts which arise 
neither from external objects nor from the determination of my 
will, but only from my faculty of thinking ; in order to mark 
the difference between the ideas or the notions which are the 
forms of these thoughts, and to distinguish them from the 
others, which may be called extraneous or voluntary, I have 
called them innate. But I have used this term in the same 
sense as when we say that generosity is innate in certain 
families ; or that certain maladies, such as gout or gravel, are 
innate in others ; not that children born in these families are 
troubled with such diseases in. their mother's womb ; but 
because they are born with the disposition or the faculty of 
contracting them." x 

His troublesome disciple, Regius, having asserted 
that all our ideas come from observation or tradi- 
tion, Descartes remarks : — 

" So thoroughly erroneous is this assertion, that whoever has 
a proper comprehension of the action of our senses, and under- 

1 Remarques de Rene Descartes sur un certain placard im- 
prime aux Pays Bas vers la fin de l'annee, 1647. — Descartes, 
(Eicvres. Ed Cousin, x. p. 71. 



Ill THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 99 

stands precisely the nature of that which is transmitted by them 
to our thinking faculty, will rather affirm that no ideas of things, 
such as are formed in thought, are brought to us by the senses, 
so that there is nothing in our ideas which is other than innate 
in the mind (naturel cl V esprit), or in the faculty of thinking, 
if only certain circumstances are excepted, which belong only to 
experience. For example, it is experience alone which causes 
us to judge that such and such ideas, now present in our minds, 
are related to certain things which are external to us ; not, in 
truth, that they have been sent into our mind by these things, 
such as they are, by the organs of the senses ; but because these 
organs have transmitted something which has occasioned the 
mind, in virtue of its innate power, to form them at this time 

rather than at another 

"Nothing passes from external objects to the soul except 
certain motions of matter (mouvcmens corporels), but neither 
these motions, nor the figures which they produce, are con- 
ceived by us as they exist in the sensory organs, as I have fully 
explained in my ' Dioptrics ' ; whence it follows that even the 
ideas of motion and of figures are innate (naturellement en nous). 
And, d, fortiori, the ideas of pain, of colours, of sounds, and of 
all similar things must be innate, in order that the mind may 
represent them to itself, on the occasion of certain motions of 
matter with which they have no resemblance." 

Whoever denies what is, in fact, an inconceivable 

proposition, that sensations pass, as such, from the 

external world into the mind, must admit the 

conclusion here laid down by Descartes, that, 

strictly speaking, sensations, and a fortiori, all the 

other contents of the mind, are innate. Or, to 

state the matter in accordance with the views 

previously expounded, that they are products of 

the inherent properties of the thinking organ, in 

which they lie potentially, before they are called 

into existence by their appropriate causes. 



100 HUME 



III 



But if all the contents of the mind are innate, 
what is meant by experience ? 

It is the conversion, by unknown causes, of these 
innate potentialities into actual existences. The 
organ of thought, prior to experience, may be 
compared to an untouched piano, in which it may 
be properly said that music is innate, inasmuch as 
its mechanism contains, potentially, so many 
octaves of musical notes. The unknown cause of 
sensation which Descartes calls the "je ne sais 
quoi dans les objets" or " choses telles qu'elles 
sont," and Kant the " Noumenon " or " Ding an 
sich," is represented by the musician ; who, by 
touching the keys, converts the potentiality of the 
mechanism into actual sounds. A note so pro- 
duced is the equivalent of a single experience. 

All the melodies and harmonies that proceed 
from the piano depend upon the action of the 
musician upon the keys. There is no internal 
mechanism which, when certain keys are struck, 
gives rise to an accompaniment of which the 
musician is only indirectly the cause. According 
to Descartes, however — and this is what is gener- 
ally fixed upon as the essence of his doctrine of 
innate ideas — the mind possesses such an internal 
mechanism, by which certain classes of thoughts 
are generated, on the occasion of certain experiences. 
Such thoughts are innate, just as sensations are 
innate ; they are not copies of sensations, any more 
than sensations are copies of motions ; they are 



Ill THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 101 

invariably generated in the mind, when certain 
experiences arise in it, just as sensations are in- 
variably generated when certain bodily motions 
take place ; they are universal, inasmuch as they 
arise under the same conditions in all men ; 
they are necessary, because their genesis under 
these conditions is invariable. These innate 
thoughts are what Descartes terms " verites " or 
truths : that is beliefs — and his notions respecting 
them are plainly set forth in a passage of the 
" Principes." 

* l Thus far I have discussed that which we know as things : 
it remains that I should speak of that which we know as truths. 
For example, when we think that it is impossible to make any- 
thing out of nothing, we do not imagine that this proposition is 
a thing which exists, or a property of something, but we take 
it for a certain eternal truth, which has its seat in the mind 
(pensde), and is called a common notion or an axiom. Similarly, 
when we affirm that it is impossible that one and the same thing 
should exist and not exist at the same time ; that that which 
has been created should not have been created ; that he who 
thinks must exist while he thinks ; and a number of other like 
propositions ; these are only truths, and not things which exist 
outside our thoughts. And there is such a number of these that 
it would be wearisome to enumerate them : nor is it necessary to 
do so, because we cannot fail to know them when the occasion 
of thinking about them presents itself, and we are not blinded 
by any prejudices." 

It would appear that Locke was not more 
familiar with Descartes' writings than Hume 
seems to have been ; for, viewed in relation to 
the passages just cited, the arguments adduced in 



102 HUME 



III 



his famous polemic against innate ideas are totally 
irrelevant. 

It has been shown that Hume practically, if 
not in so many words, admits the justice of 
Descartes' assertion that, strictly speaking, sensa- 
tions are innate ; that is to say, that they are the 
product of the reaction of the organ of the mind 
on the stimulus of an " unknown cause/' which is 
Descartes' "je ne sais quoi." Therefore, the 
difference between Descartes' opinion and that of 
Hume resolves itself into this : Given sensation- 
experiences, can all the contents of consciousness 
be derived from the collocation and metamorphosis 
of these experiences ? Or, are new elements of 
consciousness, products of an innate potentiality 
distinct from sensibility, added to these ? Hume 
affirms the former position, Descartes the latter. 
If the analysis of the phenomena of consciousness 
given in the preceding pages is correct, Hume is 
in error ; while the father of modern philosophy 
had a truer insight, though he overstated the case. 
For want of sufficiently searching psychological 
investigations, Descartes was led to suppose that 
innumerable ideas, the evolution of which in the 
course of experience can be demonstrated, were 
direct or innate products of the thinking faculty. 

As has been already pointed out, it is the great 
merit of Kant that he started afresh on the track 
indicated by Descartes, and steadily upheld the 
doctrine of the existence of elements of conscious- 



Ill THE ORIGIN OF THE IMPRESSIONS 103 

ness, which are neither sense-experiences nor any 
modifications of them. We may demur to the 
expression that space and time are forms of sensory 
intuition ; but it imperfectly represents the great 
fact that co-existence and succession are mental 
phenomena not given in the mere sense ex- 
perience. 1 

i ""Wir konnen uns keinen Gegenstand denken, ohne durch 
Kategorien ; wir konnen keinen gedachten Gegenstand erkennen, 
ohne durch Anschauungen, die jenen Begriffen entsprechen. 
Nun sind alle unsere Anschauungen sinnlich, und diese 
Erkenntniss, so fern der Gegenstand derselben gegeben ist, ist 
empirisch. Empirische Erkenntniss aber ist Erfahrung. Folglich 
ist uns keine Erkenntniss a 'priori moglich, als lediglich von 
Gegenstanden mbglicher Erfahrung." 

"Aber diese Erkenntniss, die bloss auf Gegenstande der 
Erfahrung eingeschrankt ist, ist darum nicht alle von der 
Erfahrung entlehnt, sondern was sowohl die rein en Anschauun- 
gen, als die reinen YerstandeSioegrirfe betrifft, so sind sie 
Elemente der Erkenntniss die in uns a priori angetrofFen 
werden." — Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Elementarlehre, p. 135. 

Without a glossary explanatory of Kant's terminology, this 
passage would be hardly intelligible in a translation ; but it 
may be paraphrased thus : All knowledge is founded upon 
experiences of sensation, but it is not all derived from those 
experiences; inasmuch as the impressions of relation ("reine 
Anschauungen" ; "reine Yerstandesbegriffe ") have a potential 
or & priori existence in us, and by their addition to sense- 
experiences, constitute knowledge. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CLASSIFICATION AND THE NOMENCLATURE OF 

MENTAL OPERATIONS 

If, as has been set forth in the preceding 
chapter, all mental states are effects of physical 
causes, it follows that what are called mental 
faculties and operations are, properly speaking, 
cerebral functions, allotted to definite, though not 
yet precisely assignable, parts of the brain. 

These functions appear to be reducible to three 
groups, namely : Sensation, Correlation, and Idea- 
tion. 

The organs of the functions of sensation and 
correlation are those portions of the cerebral 
substance, the molecular changes of which give 
rise to impressions of sensation and impressions of 
relation. 

The changes in the nervous matter which bring 
about the effects which we call its functions, follow 
upon some kind of stimulus, and rapidly reaching 
their maximum, as rapidly die away. The effect 
of the irritation of a nerve-fibre on the cerebral 
substance with which it is connected may be com- 



IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 105 

pared to the pulling of a long bell-wire. The 
impulse takes a little time to reach the bell ; the 
bell rings and then becomes quiescent, until another 
pull is given. So, in the brain, every sensation is 
the ring of a cerebral particle, the effect of a 
momentary impulse sent along a nerve-fibre. 

If there were a complete likeness between the 
two terms of this very rough and ready comparison, 
it is obvious that there could be no such thing as 
memory. A bell records no audible sign of having 
been rung five minutes ago, and the activity of 
a sensigenous cerebral particle might similarly 
leave no trace. Under these circumstances, again, 
it would seem that the only impressions of relation 
which could arise would be those of co-existence 
and of similarity. For succession implies memory 
of an antecedent state. 1 

But the special peculiarity of the cerebral 
apparatus is, that any given function which has 
once been performed is very easily set a-going 
again, by causes more or less different from those 
to which it owed its origin. Of the mechanism 
of this generation of images of impressions or 
ideas (in Hume's sense), which may be termed 
Ideation, we know nothing at present, though the 
fact and its results are familiar enough. 

1 It is not worth while, for the present purpose, to consider 
whether, as all nervous action occupies a sensible time, the dura- 
tion of one impression might not overlap that of the impression 
which follows it, in the case supposed. 



106 HUME 



IV 



During our waking, and many of our sleeping, 
hours, in fact, the function of ideation is in con- 
tinual, if not continuous, activity. Trains of 
thought, as we call them, succeed one another 
without intermission, even when the starting of 
new trains by fresh sense-impressions is as far as 
possible prevented. The rapidity and the intensity 
of this ideational process are obviously dependent 
upon physiological conditions. The widest differ- 
ences in these respects are constitutional in men 
of different temperaments ; and are observable in 
oneself, under varying conditions of hunger and 
repletion, fatigue and freshness, calmness and 
emotional excitement. The influence of diet on 
dreams ; of stimulants upon the fulness and the 
velocity of the stream of thought; the delirious 
phantasms generated by disease, by hashish, or by 
alcohol ; will occur to every one as examples of the 
marvellous sensitiveness of the apparatus of idea- 
tion to purely physical influences. 

The succession of mental states in ideation is 
not fortuitous, but follows the law of association, 
which may be stated thus : that every idea tends 
to be followed by some other idea which is 
associated with the first, or its impression, by a 
relation of succession, of contiguity, or of likeness. 

Thus the idea of the word horse just now pre- 
sented itself to my mind, and was followed in 
quick succession by the ideas of four legs, hoofs, 
teeth, rider, saddle, racing, cheating ; all of which 



IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 107 

ideas are connected in my experience with the 
impression, or the idea, of a horse and with one 
another, by the relations of contiguity and suc- 
cession. No great attention to what passes in the 
mind is needful to prove that our trains of thought 
are neither to be arrested, nor even permanently 
controlled, by our desires or emotions. Neverthe- 
less they are largely influenced by them. In the 
presence of a strong desire, or emotion, the stream 
of thought no longer flows on in a straight course, 
but seems, as it were, to eddy round the idea of 
that which is the object of the emotion. Every 
one who has " eaten his bread in sorrow ' knows 
how strangely the current of ideas whirls about 
the conception of the object of regret or remorse 
as a centre ; every now and then, indeed, breaking 
away into the new tracts suggested by passing 
associations, but still returning to the central 
thought. Few can have been so happy as to have 
escaped the social bore, whose pet notion is certain 
to crop up whatever topic is started ; while the 
fixed idea of the monomaniac is but the extreme 
form of the same phenomenon. 

And as, on the one hand, it is so hard to drive 
away the thought we would fain be rid of; so, 
upon the other, the pleasant imaginations which 
we would so gladly retain are, sooner or later, 
jostled away by the crowd of claimants for birth 
into the world of consciousness , which hover as a 
sort of psychical possibilities or inverse ghosts, 






108 HUME IV 

the bodily presentments of spiritual phenomena to 
be, in the limbo of the brain. In that form of desire 
which is called " attention/' the train of thought, 
held fast, for a time, in the desired direction, seems 
ever striving to get on to another line — and the 
junctions and sidings are so multitudinous ! 

The constitutents of trains of ideas may be 
grouped in various ways. 
Hume says : — 

" We find, by experience, that when any impression has been 
present in the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an 
idea, and this it may do in two different ways : either when, on 
its new appearance, it retains a considerable degree of its first 
vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate between an impression 
and an idea ; or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a 
perfect idea. The faculty by which we repeat our impressions 
in the first manner, is called the memory, and the other the 
imagination." — (I. pp. 23, 24.) 

And he considers that the only difference between 
ideas of imagination and those of memory, except 
the superior vivacity of the latter, lies in the fact 
that those of memory preserve the original order 
of the impressions from which they are derived, 
while the imagination "is free to transpose and 
change its ideas." 

The latter statement of the difference between 
memory and imagination is less open to cavil than 
the former, though by no means unassailable. 

The special characteristic of a memory surely is 
not its vividness ; but that it is a complex idea, in 



IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 109 

which the idea of that which is remembered is 
related by co-existence with other ideas, and by 
antecedence with present impressions. 

If I say I remember A. B., the chance acquaint- 
ance of ten years ago, it is not because my idea of 
A. B. is very vivid — on the contrary, it is extremely 
faint — but because that idea is associated with 
ideas of impressions co-existent with those which 
I call A. B. ; and that all these are at the end of 
the long series of ideas, which represent that 
much past time. In truth I have a much more 
vivid idea of Mr. Pickwick, or of Colonel New- 
come, than I have of A. B. ; but, associated 
with the ideas of these persons, I have no idea 
of their having ever been derived from the world 
of impressions ; and so they are relegated to the 
world of imagination. On the other hand, the 
characteristic of an imagination may properly be 
said to lie not in its intensity, but in the fact, that 
as Hume puts it, " the arrangement," or the 
relations, of the ideas are different from those in 
which the impressions, whence these ideas are de- 
rived, occurred ; or in other words, that the thing 
imagined has not happened. In popular usage, 
however, imagination is frequently employed for 
simple memory—" In imagination I was back in 
the old times." 

It is a curious omission on Hume's part that 
while thus dwelling on two classes of ideas, 
Memories and Imaginations, he has not, at the 



110 HUME 



IV 



same time, taken notice of a third group, of no 
small importance, which are as different from 
imaginations as memories are ; though, like the 
latter, they are often confounded with pure 
imaginations in general speech. These are the 
ideas of expectation, or as they may be called 
for the sake of brevity, Expectations; which 
differ from simple imaginations in being associated 
w^ith the idea of the existence of corresponding 
impressions, in the future, just as memories con- 
tain the idea of the existence of the corresponding 
impressions in the past. 

The ideas belonging to two of the three groups 
enumerated : namely, memories and expectations, 
present some features of particular interest. And 
first, with respect to memories. 

In Hume's words, all simple ideas are copies of 
simple impressions. The idea of a single sensa- 
tion is a faint, but accurate, image of that sensa- 
tion ; the idea of a relation is a reproduction of 
the feeling of co-existence, of succession, or of 
similarity. But, when complex impressions or 
complex ideas are reproduced as memories, it is 
probable that the copies never give all the details 
of the originals with perfect accuracy, and it is 
certain that they rarely do so. No one possesses 
a memory so good, that if he has only once 
observed a natural object, a second inspection does 
not show him something that he has forgotten. 
Almost all, if not all, our memories are therefore 



IV NOMENCLATIVE OF MENTAL OPEEATIONS 111 

sketches, rather than portraits, of the originals— 
the salient features are obvious, while the sub- 
ordinate characters are obscure or unrepresented. 

Now, when several complex impressions which 
are more or less different from one another — let 
us say that out of ten impressions in each, six are 
the same in all, and four are different from all 
the rest — are successively presented to the mind, 
it is easy to see what must be the nature of the 
result. The repetition of the six similar impres- 
sions will strengthen the six corresponding 
elements of the complex idea, which will there- 
fore acquire greater vividness ; while the four 
differing impressions of each will not only acquire 
no greater strength than they had at first, but, in 
accordance with the law of association, they will 
all tend to appear at once, and will thus neutralise 
one another. 

This mental operation may be rendered com- 
prehensible by considering what takes place in 
the formation of compound photographs — when 
the images of the faces of six sitters, for 
example, are each received on the same photo- 
graphic plate, for a sixth of the time requisite 
to take one portrait. The final result is that all 
those points in which the six faces agree are 
brought out strongly, while all those in which they 
differ are left vague; and thus what may be 
termed a generic portrait of the six, in contradis- 
tinction to a specific portrait of any one, is produced. 



112 HUME IV 

Thus our ideas of single complex impressions 
are incomplete in one way, and those of numerous, 
more or less similar, complex impressions are in- 
complete in another way ; that is to say, they are 
generic, not specific. And hence it follows, that 
our ideas of the impressions in question are not, 
in the strict sense of the word, copies of those im- 
pressions ; while at the same time, they may exist 
in the mind independently of language. 

The generic ideas which are formed from several 
similar, but not identical, complex experiences are 
what are commonly called abstract or general 
ideas ; and Berkeley endeavoured to prove that 
all general ideas are nothing but particular ideas 
annexed to a certain term, which gives them a 
more extensive signification, and makes them 
recall, upon occasion, other individuals which are 
similar to them. Hume says that he regards this 
as " one of the greatest and the most valuable dis- 
coveries that has been made of late years in the 
republic of letters," and endeavours to confirm it 
in such a manner that it shall be " put beyond all 
doubt and controversy." 

I may venture to express a doubt whether he 
has succeeded in his object ; but the subject 
is an abstruse one ; and I must content 
myself with the remark, that though Berkeley's 
view appears to be largely applicable to such 
general ideas as are formed after language 
has been acquired and to all the more abstract 



IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 113 

sort of conceptions, yet that general ideas of 
sensible objects may nevertheless be produced 
in the way indicated, and may exist independ- 
ently of language. In dreams, one sees houses, 
trees and other objects, which are perfectly re- 
cognisable as such, but which remind one of the 
actual objects as seen "out of the corner of the 
eye," or of the pictures thrown by a badly- 
focused magic lantern. A man addresses us 
who is like a figure seen by twilight; or we 
travel through countries where every feature of 
the scenery is vague ; the outlines of the hills 
are ill-marked, and the rivers have no defined 
banks. They are, in short, generic ideas of many 
past impressions of men, hills, and rivers. An 
anatomist who occupies himself intently with the 
examination of several specimens of some new 
kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid 
a conception of its form and structure, that the 
idea may take visible shape and become a sort of 
waking dream. But the figure which thus pre- 
sents itself is generic, not specific. It is no copy 
of any one specimen, but, more or less, a mean of 
the series; and there seems no reason to doubt 
that the minds of children before they learn to 
speak, and of deaf mutes, are people with simi- 
larly generated generic ideas of sensible objects. 

It has been seen that a memory is a complex 
idea made up of at least two constituents. In the 

151 



114 HUME IV 

first place there is the idea of an object ; and 
secondly, there is the idea of the relation of ante- 
cedents between that object and some present 
objects. 

To say that one has a recollection of a given 
event and to express the belief that it happened, 
are two ways of giving an account of one and the 
same mental fact. But the former mode of stat- 
ing the fact of memory is preferable, at present, 
because it certainly does not presuppose the exist- 
ence of language in the mind of the rememberer ; 
while it may be said that the latter does. It is 
perfectly possible to have the idea of an event A, 
and of the events B, C, D, which came between it 
and the present state E, as mere mental pictures. 
It is hardly to be doubted that children have very 
distinct memories long before they can speak ; and 
we believe that such is the case because they act 
upon their memories. But, if they act upon their 
memories, they to all intents and purposes believe 
their memories. In other words, though, being 
devoid of language, the child cannot frame a pro- 
position expressive of belief; cannot say " sugar- 
plum was sweet " ; yet the physical operation of 
which that proposition is merely the verbal ex- 
pression, is perfectly effected. The experience of 
the co-existence of sweetness with sugar has pro- 
duced a state of mind which bears the same relation 
to a verbal proposition, as the natural disposition 
to produce a given idea, assumed to exist by 



IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 115 

Descartes as an " innate idea " would bear to that 
idea put into words. 

The fact that the beliefs of memory precede the 
use of language, and therefore are originally purely 
instinctive, and independent of any rational justifi- 
cation, should have been of great importance to 
Hume, from its bearing upon his theory of causa- 
tion ; and it is curious that he has not adverted to 
it, but always takes the trustworthiness of mem- 
ories for granted. It may be worth while briefly 
to make good the omission. 

That I was in pain, yesterday, is as certain to 
me as any matter of fact can be ; by no effort of 
the imagination is it possible for me really to 
entertain the contrary belief. At the same time, 
I am bound to admit, that the whole foundation 
for my belief is the fact, that the idea of pain is 
indissolubly associated in my mind with the idea 
of that much past time. Any one who will be at 
the trouble may provide himself with hundreds of 
examples to the same effect. 

This and similar observations are important 
under another aspect. They prove that the idea 
of even a single strong impression may be so 
powerfully associated with that of a certain time, 
as to originate a belief of which the contrary is 
inconceivable, and which may therefore be pro- 
perly said to be necessary. A single weak, or 
moderately strong, impression may not be repre- 
sented by any memory. But this defect of weak 



116 HUME IV 

experiences may be compensated by their repeti- 
tion; and what Hume means by " custom" or 
" habit " is simply the repetition of experiences. 

" "Wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation 
produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, with- 
out being impelled by any reasoning or process of the under- 
standing, we always say that this propensity is the effect of 
Custom. By employing that word, we pretend not to have 
given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point 
out a principle of human nature which is universally acknow- 
ledged, and which is well known by its effects." — (IY. p. 52.) 

It has been shown that an expectation is a 
complex idea which, like a memory, is made up of 
two constituents. The one is the idea of an 
object, the other is the idea of a relation of 
sequence between that object and some present 
object ; and the reasoning which applied to 
memories applies to expectations. To have an 
expectation x of a given event, and to believe that 
it will happen, are only two modes of stating the 
same fact. Again, just in the same way as we 
call a memory, put into words, a belief, so we give 
the same name to an expectation in like clothing. 
And the fact already cited, that a child before it 
can speak acts upon its memories, is good evidence 
that it forms expectations. The infant who 
knows the meaning neither of " sugar-plum " nor 

1 We give no name to faint memories ; but expectations of 
like character play so large a part in human affairs, that they, 
together with the associated emotions of pleasure and pain, are 
distinguished as " hopes" or "fears." 



IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 117 

of "sweet," nevertheless is in full possession of 
that complex idea, which, when he has learned 
to employ language, will take the form of the 
verbal proposition, " A sugar-plum will be sweet." 
Thus, beliefs of expectation, or at any rate their 
potentialities, are, as much as those of memory, 
antecedent to speech, and are as incapable of 
justification by any logical process. In fact, 
expectations are but memories inverted. The 
association which is the foundation of expectation 
must exist as a memory before it can play its part. 
As Hume says, — 



a 



... it is certain we here advance a very intelligible pro- 
position at least, if not a true one, when we assert that after the 
constant conjunction of two objects, heat and flame, for instance, 
weight and solidity, we are determined by custom alone to ex- 
pect the one from the appearance of the other. This hypothesis 
seems even the only one which explains the difficulty why we 
draw from a thousand instances, an inference which we are not 
able to draw from one instance, that is in no respect different 
from them." . . . 

" Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that 
principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and 
makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with 
those which have appeared in the past." . . . 

"All belief of matter-of-fact or real existence is derived 
merely from some object present to the memory or senses, and a 
customary conjunction between that and some other object ; or 
in other words, having found, in many instances, that any two 
kinds of objects, flame and heat, snow and cold, have always 
been conjoined together, if flame or snow be presented anew to 
the senses, the mind is carried by custom to expect heat or cold, 
and to believe that such a quality does exist and will discover 
itself upon a nearer approach. This belief is the necessary result 



118 HUME 



IV 



of placing the mind in such circumstances. It is an operation 
of the soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable as to feel 
the passion of love, when we receive benefits, or hatred, when 
we meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of 
natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought 
and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent." — 
(IT. pp. 52—56.) 

The only comment that appears needful here is, 
that Hume has attached somewhat too exclusive 
a weight to that repetition of experiences to which 
alone the term " custom " can be properly applied. 
The proverb says that " a burnt child dreads the 
fire " ; and any one who will make the experiment 
will find, that one burning is quite sufficient to 
establish an indissoluble belief that contact with 
fire and pain go together. 

As a sort of inverted memory, expectation 
follows the same laws ; hence, while a belief of 
expectation is, in most cases, as Hume truly says, 
established by custom, or the repetition of weak 
impressions, it may quite well be based upon a 
single strong experience. In the absence of 
language, a specific memory cannot be strengthened 
by repetition. It is obvious that that which has 
happened cannot happen again, with the same 
collateral associations of co-existence and succes- 
sion. But, memories of the co-existence and 
succession of impresions are capable of being 
indefinitely strengthened by the recurrence of 
similar impressions, in the same order, even 
though the collateral associations are totally 



IV NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS 119 

different ; in fact, the ideas of these impressions 
become generic. 

If I recollect that a piece of ice was cold yester- 
day, nothing can strengthen the recollection of 
that particular fact ; on the contrary, it may grow 
weaker, in the absence of any record of it. But 
if I touch ice to-day and again find it cold, the 
association is repeated, and the memory of it 
becomes stronger. And by this very simple 
process of repetition of experience, it has become 
utterly impossible for us to think of having 
handled ice without thinking of its coldness. But, 
that which is, under the one aspect, the strength- 
ening of a memory, is, under the other, the inten- 
sification of an expectation. Not only can we not 
think of having touched ice, without feeling cold, 
but we cannot think of touching ice, in the future, 
without expecting to feel cold. An expectation so 
strong that it cannot be changed, or abolished, 
may thus be generated out of repeated experiences. 
And it is important to note that such expecta- 
tions may be formed quite unconsciously. In my 
dressing-room, a certain can is usually kept full of 
water, and I am in the habit of lifting it to pour 
out water for washing. Sometimes the servant 
has forgotten to fill it, and then I find that, when 
I take hold of the handle, the can goes up with a 
jerk. Long association has, in fact, led me to 
expect the can to have a considerable weight ; and, 



120 HUME 



IV 



quite unawares, my muscular effort is adjusted to 
the expectation. 

The process of strengthening generic memories 
of succession, and, at the same time, intensifying 
expectations of succession, is what is commonly 
called verification. The impression B has fre- 
quently been observed to follow the impression A. 
The association thus produced is represented as 
the memory, A -> B. When the impression A 
appears again, the idea of B follows, associated 
with that of the immediate appearance of 
the impression B. If the impression B does 
appear, the expectation is said to be verified ; 
while the memory A -> B is strengthened, and 
gives rise in turn to a stronger expectation. And 
repeated verification may render that expectation 
so strong that its non-verification is incon- 
ceivable. 



CHAPTER V 

THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 

In the course of the preceding chapters, attention 
has been more than once called to the fact, that 
the elements of consciousness and the operations 
of the mental faculties, tinder discussion, exist 
independently of and antecedent to, the existence 
of language. 

If any weight is to be attached to arguments 
from analogy, there is overwhelming evidence in 
favour of the belief that children, before they can 
speak, and deaf mutes, possess the feelings to 
which those who have acquired the faculty of 
speech apply the name of sensations; that they 
have the feelings of relation ; that trains of ideas 
pass through their minds ; that generic ideas are 
formed from specific ones ; and, that among these, 
ideas of memory and expectation occupy a most 
important place, inasmuch as, in their quality of 
potential beliefs, they furnish the grounds of action. 
This conclusion, in truth, is one of those which, 
though they cannot be demonstrated, are never 



122 HUME V 

doubted ; and, since it is highly probable and 
cannot be disproved, we are quite safe in accepting 
it, as, at any rate, a good working hypothesis. 

But, if we accept it, we must extend it to a 
much wider assemblage of living beings. What- 
ever cogency is attached to the arguments in 
favour of the occurrence of all the fundamental 
phenomena of mind in young children and deaf 
mutes, an equal force must be allowed to appertain 
to those which may be adduced to prove that the 
higher animals have minds. We must admit that 
Hume does not express himself too strongly when 
he says — 

"no truth appears to me more evident, than that the beasts are 
endowed with thought and reason as well as men. The argu- 
ments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the 
most stupid and ignorant." — (I. p. 232.) 

In fact, this is one of the few cases in which the 
conviction which forces itself upon the stupid and 
the ignorant, is fortified by the reasonings of the 
intelligent, and has its foundation deepened by 
every increase of knowledge. It is not merely that 
the observation of the actions of animals almost 
irresistibly suggests the attribution to them of 
mental states, such as those, which accompany 
corresponding actions in men. The minute com- 
parison which has been instituted by anatomists 
and physiologists between the organs which we 
know to constitute the apparatus of thought, in 
man, and the corresponding organs in brutes, has 



V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 123 

demonstrated the existence of the closest simi- 
larity between the two, not only in structure, as 
far as the microscope will carry us, but in func- 
tion, as far as functions are determinable by 
experiment. There is no question in the mind of 
any one acquainted with the facts that, so far as 
observation and experiment can take us, the 
structure and the functions of the nervous system 
are fundamentally the same in an ape, or in a dog, 
and in a man. And the suggestion that we must 
stop at the exact point at which direct proof fails 
us ; and refuse to believe that the similarity which 
extends so far stretches yet further, is no better 
than a quibble. Robinson Crusoe did not feel 
bound to conclude, from the single human foot- 
print which he saw in the sand, that the maker of 
the impression had only one leg. 

Structure for structure, down to the minutest 
microscopical details, the eye, the ear, the 
olfactory organs, the nerves, the spinal cord, the 
brain of an ape, or of a dog, correspond w T ith the 
same organs in the human subject. Cut a nerve, 
and the evidence of paralysis, or of insensibility, 
is the same in the two cases ; apply pressure to 
the brain, or administer a narcotic, and the signs 
of intelligence disappear in the one as in the other. 
Whatever reason we have for believing that the 
changes which take place in the normal cerebral 
substance of man give rise to states of conscious- 
ness, the same reason exists for the belief that 



124 HUME V 

the modes of motion of the cerebral substance of 
an ape, or of a dog, produce like effects. 

A dog acts as if he had all the different kinds 
of impressions of sensation of which each of us is 
cognisant. Moreover, he governs his movements 
exactly as if he had the feelings of distance, form, 
succession, likeness, and unlikeness, with which 
we are familiar, or as if the impressions of relation 
were generated in his mind as they are in our own. 
Sleeping dogs frequently appear to dream. If 
they do, it must be admitted that ideation goes 
on in them while they are asleep ; and, in that 
case, there is no reason to doubt that they are 
conscious of trains of ideas in their waking state. 
Further, that dogs, if they possess ideas at all, 
have memories and expectations, and those 
potential beliefs of which these states are the 
foundation, can hardly be doubted by any one 
who is conversant with their ways. Finally, there 
would appear to be no valid argument against 
the supposition that dogs form generic ideas of 
sensible objects. One of the most curious pecu- 
liarities of the dog mind is its inherent snobbish- 
ness, shown by the regard paid to external re- 
spectability. The dog who barks furiously at a 
beggar will let a well-dressed man pass him 
without opposition. Has he not then a " generic 
idea " of rags and dirt associated with the idea of 
aversion, and that of sleek broadcloth associated 
with the idea of liking ? 



V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 125 

In short, it seems hard to assign any good 
reason for denying to the higher animals any 
mental state, or process, in which the employment 
of the vocal or visual symbols of which language 
is composed is not involved ; and comparative 
psychology confirms the position in relation to 
the rest of the animal world assigned to man by 
comparative anatomy. As comparative anatomy 
is easily able to show that, physically, man is but 
the last term of a long series of forms, which lead, 
by slow gradations, from the highest mammal to 
the almost formless speck of living protoplasm, 
which lies on the shadowy boundary between 
animal and vegetable life ; so, comparative 
psychology, though but a young science, and far 
short of her elder sister's growth, points to the 
same conclusion. 

In the absence of a distinct nervous system, 
we have no right to look for its product, conscious- 
ness : and, even in those forms of animal life in 
which the nervous apparatus has reached no 
higher degree of development, than that exhibited 
by the system of the spinal cord and the foun- 
dation of the brain in ourselves, the argument 
from analogy leaves the assumption of the exist- 
ence of any form of consciousness unsupported. 
With the super-addition of a nervous apparatus 
corresponding with the cerebrum in ourselves, it 
is allowable to suppose the appearance of the 
simplest states of consciousness, or the sensations ; 



126 HUME V 

and it is conceivable that these may at first exist, 
without any power of reproducing them, as 
memories ; and, consequently, without ideation. 
Still higher, an apparatus of correlation may be 
superadded, until, as all these organs become more 
developed, the condition of the highest speechless 
animals is attained. 

It is a remarkable example of Hume's sagacity 
that he perceived the importance of a branch of 
science which, even now, can hardly be said to 
exist; and that, in a remarkable passage, he 
sketches in bold outlines the chief features of 
comparative psychology. 

"... any theory, by which we explain the operations of the 
understanding, or the origin and connection of the passions in 
man, will acquire additional authority if we find that the same 
theory is requisite to explain the same phenomena in all other 
animals. "We shall make trial of this with regard to the hypo- 
thesis by which we have, in the foregoing discourse, endeavoured 
to account for all experimental reasonings ; and it is hoped that 
this new point of view will serve to confirm all our former 
observations. 

" First, it seems evident that animals, as well as men, learn 
many things from experience, and infer that the same events 
will always follow from the same causes. By this principle 
they become acquainted with the more obvious properties of 
external objects, and gradually, from their birth, treasure up a 
knowledge of the nature of fire, water, earth, stones, heights, 
depths, &c, and of the effects which result from their operation. 
The ignorance and inexperience of the young are here plainly 
distinguishable from the cunning and sagacity of the old, who 
have learned, by long observation, to avoid what hurt them, 
and pursue what gave ease or pleasure. A horse that has been 
accustomed to the field, becomes acquainted with the proper 



V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 127 

height which he can leap, and will never attempt what exceeds 
his force and ability. An old greyhound will trust the more 
fatiguing part of the chase to the younger, and will place him- 
self so as to meet the hare in her doubles ; nor are the conjectures 
which he forms on this occasion founded on anything but his 
observation and experience. 

" This is still more evident from the effects of discipline and 
education on animals, who, by the proper application of rewards 
and punishments, may be taught any course of action, the most 
contrary to their natural instincts and propensities. Is it not 
experience which renders a dog apprehensive of pain when you 
menace him, or lift up the whip to beat him ? Is it not even 
experience which makes him answer to his name, and infer from 
such an arbitrary sound that you mean him rather than any of 
his fellows, and intend to call him, when you pronounce it in a 
certain manner and with a certain tone and accent ? 

"In all these cases we may observe that the animal infers 
some fact beyond what immediately strikes his senses ; and that 
this inference is altogether founded on past experience, while the 
creature expects from the present object the same consequences 
which it has always found in its observation to result from 
similar objects. 

"Secondly, it is impossible that this inference of the animal 
can be founded on any process of argument or reasoning by 
which he concludes that like events must follow like objects, 
and that the course of nature will always be regular in its 
operations. For if there be in reality any arguments of this 
nature they surely lie too abstruse for the observation of such 
imperfect understandings ; since it may well employ the utmost 
care and attention of a philosophic genius to discover and observe 
them. Animals therefore are not guided in these inferences by 
reasoning ; neither are children ; neither are the generality of 
mankind in their ordinary actions and conclusions ; neither are 
philosophers themselves, who, in all the active parts of life, are 
in the main the same as the vulgar, and are governed by the 
same maxims. Nature must have provided some other principle, 
of more ready and more general use and application ; nor can an 
operation of such immense conf-equence in life as that of in- 



128 HUME V 

i erring effects from causes, be trusted to the uncertain process of 
reasoning and argumentation. Were this doubtful with regard 
to men, it seems to admit of no question with regard to the 
brute creation ; and the conclusion being once firmly established 
in the one, we have a strong presumption, from all the rules of 
analogy, that it ought to be universally admitted, without any 
exception or reserve. It is custom alone which engages animals, 
from every object that strikes their senses, to infer its usual 
attendant, and carries their imagination from the appearance of 
the one to conceive the other, in that particular manner which 
we denominate belief. No other explication can be given of 
this operation in all the higher as well as lower classes of sen- 
sitive beings which fall under our notice and observation." 
—(IV. pp. 122—4.) 

It will be observed that Hume appears to 
contrast the " inference of the animal " with the 
" process of argument or reasoning in man." But 
it would be a complete misapprehension of his 
intention, if we were to suppose, that he thereby 
means to imply that there is any real difference 
between the two processes. The "inference of 
the animal ' is a potential belief of expectation ; 
the process of argument, or reasoning in man is 
based upon potential beliefs of expectation, which 
are formed in the man exactly in the same way as 
in the animal. But, in men endowed with speech 
the mental state which constitutes the potential 
belief is represented by a, verbal proposition, and 
thus becomes what all the world recognises as a 
belief. The fallacy which Hume combats is, that 
the proposition, or verbal representative of a 
belief, has come to be regarded as a reality, 



V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 129 

instead of as the mere symbol which it really 
is ; and that reasoning, or logic, which deals with 
nothing but propositions, is supposed to be neces- 
sary in order to validate the natural fact symbol- 
ised by those propositions. It is a fallacy similar 
to that of supposing that money is the foundation 
of wealth, whereas it is only the wholly unessen- 
tial symbol of property. 

In the passage which immediately follows that 
just quoted, Hume makes admissions which might 
be turned to serious account against some of his 
own doctrines. 

"But though animals learn many parts of their knowledge 
from observation, there are also many parts of it which they 
derive from the original hand of Nature, which much exceed 
the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions, and in 
which they improve, little or nothing, by the longest practice 
and experience. These we denominate Instincts, and are so 
apt to admire as something very extraordinary and inexplicable 
by all the disquisitions of human understanding. But our 
wonder will perhaps cease or diminish when we consider that the 
experimental reasoning itself, which we possess in common with 
beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is 
nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power, that acts 
in us unknown to ourselves, and in its chief operations is not 
directed by any such relations or comparison of ideas as are the 
proper objects of our intellectual faculties. 

"Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct 
which teaches a man to avoid the fire, as much as that which 
teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation 
and the whole economy and order of its nursery." — (IV. pp. 
125, 126.) 

The parallel here drawn between the "avoid- 
ance of a fire ' by a man and the incubatory 

152 



130 HUME V 

instinct of a bird is inexact. The man avoids 
fire when he has had experience of the pain 
produced by burning ; but the bird incubates the 
first time it lays eggs, and therefore before it has 
had any experience of incubation. For the com- 
parison to be admissible, it would be necessary 
that a man should avoid fire the first time he saw 
it, which is notoriously not the case. 

The term "instinct' is very vague and ill- 
defined. It is commonly employed to denote any 
action, or even feeling, which is not dictated by 
conscious reasoning, whether it is, or is not, the 
result of previous experience. It is " instinct ' 
which leads a chicken just hatched to pick up a 
grain of corn ; parental love is said to be " instinct- 
ive "; the drowning man who catches at a straw 
does it " instinctively " ; and the hand that acci- 
dentally touches something hot is drawn back by 
"instinct." Thus "instinct" is made to cover 
everything from a simple reflex movement, in 
which the organ of consciousness need not be at 
all implicated, up to a complex combination of acts 
directed towards a definite end and accompanied 
by intense consciousness. 

But this loose employment of the term "in- 
stinct" really accords with the nature of the 
thing; for it is wholly impossible to draw any 
line of demarcation between reflex actions and 
instincts. If a frog, on the flank of which a little 
drop of acid has been placed, rubs it off with the 



V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 131 

foot of the same side ; and, if that foot be held, 
performs the same operation, at the cost of much 
effort, with the other foot, it certainly displays a 
curious instinct. But it is no less true that the 
whole operation is a reflex operation of the spinal 
cord, which can be performed quite as well when 
the brain is destroyed; and between which and 
simple reflex actions there is a complete series of 
gradations. In like manner, when an infant 
takes the breast, it is impossible to say whether 
the action should be rather termed instinctive or 
reflex. 

What are usually called the instincts of animals 
are, however, acts of such a nature that, if they 
were performed by men, they would involve the 
generation of a series of ideas and of inferences 
from them; and it is a curious, apparently an 
insoluble, problem whether they are, or are not, 
accompanied by cerebral changes of the same 
nature as those which give rise to ideas and 
inferences in ourselves. When a chicken picks up 
a grain, for example, are there, firstly, certain 
sensations, accompanied by the feeling of relation 
between the grain and its own body ; secondly, a 
desire of the grain ; thirdly, a volition to seize it ? 
Or, are only the sensational terms of the series 
actually represented in consciousness ? 

The latter seems the more probable opinion, 
though it must be admitted that the other alter- 
native is possible. But, in this case, the series of 



132 HUME V 

mental states which occurs is such as would be 
represented in language by a series of propositions, 
and would afford proof positive of the existence 
of innate ideas, in the Cartesian sense. Indeed, a 
metaphysical fowl, brooding over the mental 
operations of his fully-fledged consciousness, might 
appeal to the fact as proof that, in the very first 
action of his life, he assumed the existence of the 
Ego and the non-Ego, and of a relation between 
the two. 

In all seriousness, if the existence of instincts be 
granted, the possibility of the existence of innate 
ideas, in the most extended sense ever imagined 
by Descartes, must also be admitted. In fact, 
Descartes, as we have seen, illustrates what he 
means by an innate idea, by the analogy of here- 
ditary diseases or hereditary mental peculiarities, 
such as generosity. On the other hand, hereditary 
mental tendencies may justly be termed instincts ; 
and still more appropriately might those special 
proclivities, which constitute what we call genius, 
come into the same category. 

The child who is impelled to draw as soon as it 
can hold a pencil ; the Mozart who breaks out into 
music as early ; the boy Bidder who worked out 
the most complicated sums without learning 
arithmetic; the boy Pascal who evolved Euclid 
out of his own consciousness : all these may be 
said to have been impelled by instinct, as much as 
are the beaver and the bee. And the man of 



V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 133 

genius is distinct in kind from the man of clever- 
ness, by reason of the working within him of 
strong innate tendencies — which cultivation may 
improve, but which it can no more create, than 
horticulture can make thistles bear figs. The 
analogy between a musical instrument and the 
mind holds good here also. Art and industry may 
get much music, of a sort, out of a penny whistle ; 
but, when all is done, it has no chance against an 
organ. The innate musical potentialities of the 
two are infinitely different. 



CHAPTER VI 

LANGUAGE — PROPOSITIONS CONCERNING NECES- 
SARY TRUTHS 

Though we may accept Hume's conclusion 
that speechless animals think, believe, and reason ; 
yet, it must be borne in mind, that there is an 
important difference between the signification of 
the terms when applied to them and when ap- 
plied to those animals which possess language. The 
thoughts of the former are trains of mere feelings ; 
those of the latter are, in addition, trains of the 
ideas of the signs which represent feelings, and 
which are called " words." 

A word, in fact, is a spoken or written sign, the 
idea of which is, by repetition, so closely associated 
with the idea of the simple or complex feeling 
which it represents, that the association becomes 
indissoluble. No Englishman, for example, can 
think of the word "dog" without immediately 
having the idea of the group of impressions to 
which that name is given ; and conversely, the 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 135 

group of impressions immediately calls up the idea 
of the word " dog." 

The association of words with impressions and 
ideas is the process of naming ; and language ap- 
proaches perfection, in proportion as the shades of 
difference between various ideas and impressions 
are represented by differences in their names. 

The names of simple impressions and ideas, or 
of groups of co-existent or successive complex 
impressions and ideas, considered per se, are 
substantives ; as redness, dog, silver, mouth ; 
while the names of impressions or ideas considered 
as parts or attributes of a complex whole, are 
adjectives. Thus redness, considered as part of 
the complex idea of a rose, becomes the adjective 
red ; flesh-eater, as part of the idea of a dog, is 
represented by carnivorous ; whiteness, as part of 
the idea of silver, is white ; and so on. 

The linguistic machinery for the expression of 
belief is called predication ; and, as all beliefs ex- 
press ideas of relation, we may say that the sign 
of predication is the verbal symbol of a feeling of 
relation. The words which serve to indicate 
predication are verbs. If I say " silver " and then 
" white," I merely utter two names ; but if I 
interpose between them the verb " is," I express a 
belief in the co-existence of the feeling of white- 
ness with the other feelings which constitute the 
totality of the complex idea of silver ; in other 
words, I predicate " whiteness " of silver. 



136 HUME VI 

In such a case as this, the verb expresses predi- 
cation and nothing else, and is called a copula. 
But, in the great majority of verbs, the word is 
the sign of a complex idea, and the predication is 
expressed only by its form. Thus in "silver 
shines," the verb "to shine' is the sign for the 
feeling of brightness, and the mark of predication 
lies in the form " shine-s." 

Another result is brought about by the forms 
of verbs. By slight modifications they are made 
to indicate that a belief, or predication, is a 
memory, or is an expectation. Thus " silver 
shone r expresses a memory ; " silver will shine ' 
an expectation. 

The form of words which expresses a predication 
is a proposition. Hence, every predication is the 
verbal equivalent of a belief; and, as every belief is 
either an immediate consciousness, a memory, or an 
expectation, and as every expectation is traceable 
to a memory, it follows that, in the long run, all 
propositions express either immediate states of 
consciousness, or memories. The proposition 
which predicates A of X must mean either, that 
the fact is testified by my present consciousness, 
as when I say that two colours, visible at this 
moment, resemble one another ; or that A is 
indissolubly associated with X in memory ; or that 
A is indissolubly associated with X in expectation. 
But it has already been shown that expectation 
is only an expression of memory. 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 137 

Hume does not discuss the nature of language, 
but so much of what remains to be said, concern- 
ing his philosophical tenets, turns upon the value 
and the origin of verbal propositions, that this 
summary sketch of the relations of language to the 
thinking process will probably not be deemed 
superfluous. 

So large an extent of the field of thought is 
traversed by Hume, in his discussion of the verbal 
propositions in which mankind enshrine their 
beliefs, that it would be impossible to follow him 
throughout all the windings of his long journey, 
within the limits of this essay. I purpose, there- 
fore, to limit myself to those propositions which 
concern— 1. Necessary Truths; 2. The order of 
Nature ; 3. The Soul ; 4. Theism ; 5. The Passions 
and Volition ; 6. The Principle of Morals. 

Hume's views respecting necessary truths, and 
more particularly concerning causation, have, more 
than any other part of his teaching, contributed to 
give him a prominent place in the history of 
philosophy. 

ct All the objects of human reason an£ inquiry may naturally 
be divided into two kinds, to wit, relations of ideas and matters 
of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of geometry, algebra, 
and arithmetic, and, in short, every affirmation which is either 
intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the 
hypothenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition 
which expresses a relation between these two figures. Thai 
three times fine is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a relation 



138 HUME 



VI 



between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discover- 
able by the mere operation of thought without dependence on 
whatever is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there 
never were a circle or a triangle in nature, the truths demon- 
strated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and 
evidence. 

"Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human 
reason, are not ascertained in the same manner, nor is an 
evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with 
the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still 
possible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is con- 
ceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as 
if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise 
to-morrow, is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no 
more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. We 
should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. 
Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, 
and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind." — (IV. 
pp. 32, 33.) 

The distinction here drawn between the truths 
of geometry and other kinds of truth is far less 
sharply indicated in the " Treatise;" but as Hume 
expressly disowns any opinions on these matters 
but such as are expressed in the " Inquiry/' we may 
confine ourselves to the latter ; and it is needful 
to look narrowly into the propositions here laid 
down, as much stress has been laid upon Hume's 
admission that the truths of mathematics are 
intuitively and demonstratively certain ; in other 
words, that they are necessary and, in that respect, 
differ from all other kinds of belief. 

What is meant by the assertion that " pro- 
positions of this kind are discoverable by the 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 139 

mere operation of thought without dependence 
on what is anywhere existent in the universe " ? 

Suppose that there were no such things as 
impressions of sight and touch anywhere in the 
universe, what idea could we have even of a 
straight line, much less of a triangle and of the 
relations between its sides ? The fundamental 
proposition of all Hume's philosophy is that ideas 
are copied from impressions; and, therefore, if 
there were no impressions of straight lines and 
triangles there could be no ideas of straight 
lines and triangles. But what we mean by the 
universe is the sum of our actual and possible 
impressions. 

So, again, whether our conception of number is 
derived from relations of impressions in space or 
in time, the impressions must exist in nature, that 
is, in experience, before their relations can be per- 
ceived. Form and number are mere names for 
certain relations between matters of fact ; unless 
a man had seen or felt the difference between a 
straight line and a crooked one, straight and 
crooked would have no more meaning to him, than 
red and blue to the blind. 

The axiom, that things which are equal to the 
same are equal to one another, is only a particular 
case of the predication of similarity ; if there were 
no impressions, it is obvious that there could be no 
predicates. But what is an existence in the uni- 
verse but an impression ? 



140 HUME VI 

If what are called necessary truths are rigidly 
analysed, they will be found to be of two kinds. 
Either they depend on the convention which 
underlies the possibility of intelligible speech, 
that terms shall always have the same meaning ; 
or they are propositions the negation of which 
implies the dissolution of some association in 
memory or expectation, which is in fact indis- 
soluble ; or the denial of some fact of immediate 
consciousness. 

The " necessary truth " A = A means that the 
perception which is called A shall always be called 
A. The " necessary truth" that "two straight 
lines cannot inclose a space/' means that we have 
no memory, and can form no expectation of their 
so doing. The denial of the " necessary truth " 
that the thought now in my mind exists, involves 
the denial of consciousness. 

To the assertion that the evidence of matter of 
fact is not so strong as that of relations of ideas, 
it may be justly replied, that a great number of 
matters of fact are nothing but relations of ideas. 
If I say that red is unlike blue, I make an asser- 
tion concerning a relation of ideas ; but it is also 
matter of fact, and the contrary proposition is in- 
conceivable. If I remember 1 something that 
happened five minutes ago, that is matter of 
fact ; and, at the same time, it expresses a relation 

1 Hume, however, expressly includes the " records of our 
memory " among his matters of fact. — (IV. p. 33.) 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 141 

between the event remembered and the present 
time. It is wholly inconceivable to me that the 
event did not happen, so that my assurance respect- 
ing it is as strong as that which I have respecting 
any other necessary truth. In fact, the man is either 
very wise, or very virtuous, or very lucky, perhaps 
all three, who has gone through life without 
accumulating a store of such necessary beliefs 
which he would give a good deal to be able to dis- 
believe. 

It would be beside the mark to discuss the 
matter further on the present occasion. It is 
sufficient to point out that, whatever may be 
the differences between mathematical and other 
truths, they do not justify Hume's statement. 
And it is, at any rate, impossible to prove that the 
cogency of mathematical first principles is due 
to anything more than these circumstances ; that 
the experiences with which they are concerned are 
among the first which arise in the mind ; that 
they are so incessantly repeated as to justify us, 
according to the ordinary laws of ideation, in 
expecting that the associations which they form 
will be of extreme tenacity ; while the fact, that 
the expectations based upon them are always 
verified, finishes the process of welding them 
together. 

Thus, if the axioms of mathematics are innate, 
nature would seem to have taken unnecessary 
trouble ; since the ordinary process of association 



142 HUME 



VI 



appears to be amply sufficient to confer upon them 
all the universality and necessity which they 
actually possess. 

Whatever needless admissions Hume may have 
made respecting other necessary truths he is quite 
clear about the axiom of causation, " That what- 
ever event has a beginning must have a cause ; ' 
whether and in what sense it is a necessary truth ; 
and, that question being decided, whence it is 
derived. 

With respect to the first question, Hume denies 
that it is a necessary truth, in the sense that 
we are unable to conceive the contrary. The 
evidence by which he supports this conclusion in 
the " Inquiry," however, is not strictly relevant 
to the issue. 

" No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to 
the senses, either the cause which produced it, or the effects 
which will arise from it ; nor can our reason, unassisted by 
experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence 
and matter of fact." — (IY. p. 35.) 

Abundant illustrations are given of this asser- 
tion, which indeed cannot be seriously doubted ; 
but it does not follow that, because we are totally 
unable to say what cause preceded, or what effect 
will succeed, any event, we do not necessarily sup- 
pose that the event had a cause and will be 
succeeded by an effect. The scientific investigator 
who notes a new phenomenon may be utterly 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 143 

ignorant of its cause, but he will, without hesita- 
tion, seek for that cause. If you ask him why he 
does so, he will probably say that it must have 
had a cause ; and thereby imply that his belief in 
causation is a necessary belief. 

In the " Treatise' ' Hume indeed takes the bull 
by the horns : 

". . . as all distinct ideas are separable from each other, and 
as the ideas of cause and effect are evidently distinct, 'twill be 
easy for us to conceive any object to be non-existent this moment 
and existent the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea 
of a cause or productive principle." — (I. p. 111.) 

If Hume had been content to state what he 
believed to be matter of fact, and had abstained 
from giving superfluous reasons for that which is 
susceptible of being proved or disproved only by 
personal experience, his position would have been 
stronger. For it seems clear that, on the ground 
of observation, he is quite right. Any man who 
lets his fancy run riot in a waking dream, may 
experience the existence at one moment, and the 
non-existence at the next, of phenomena which 
suggest no connexion of cause and effect. Not 
only so, but it is notorious that, to the unthinking 
mass of mankind, nine-tenths of the facts of life 
do not suggest the relation of cause and effect ; 
and they practically deny the existence of any 
such relation by attributing them to chance. 
Few gamblers but would stare if they were told 
that the falling of a die on a particular face is as 



144 HUME 



VI 



much the effect of a definite cause as the fact of its 
falling ; it is a proverb that " the wind bloweth 
where it listeth " ; and even thoughtful men usually 
receive with surprise the suggestion, that the 
form of the crest of every wave that breaks, wind- 
driven, on the sea-shore, and the direction of 
every particle of foam that flies before the ggle, 
are the exact effects of definite causes ; and, as 
such, must be capable of being determined, de- 
ductively, from the laws of motion and the pro- 
perties of air and water. So again, there are 
large numbers of highly intelligent persons who 
rather pride themselves on their fixed belief that 
our volitions have no cause ; or that the will 
causes itself, which is either the same thing, or a 
contradiction in terms. 

Hume's argument in support of what appears 
to be a true proposition, however, is of the circular 
sort, for the major premiss, that all distinct ideas 
are separable in thought, assumes the question at 
issue. 

But the question whether the idea of causation 
is necessary, or not, is really of very little import- 
ance. For, to say that an idea is necessary is 
simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the con- 
trary ; and the fact that we cannot conceive the 
contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but 
is certainly no proof, of its truth. 

In the well-known experiment of touching a 
single round object, such as a marble, with crossed 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 145 

fingers, it is utterly impossible to conceive that 
we have not two round objects under them ; and, 
though light is undoubtedly a mere sensation 
arising in the brain, it is utterly impossible to 
conceive that it is not outside the retina. In 
the same way, he who touches anything with a 
rod, not only is irresistibly led to believe that the 
sensation of contact is at the end of the rod, but 
is utterly incapable of conceiving that this sensa- 
tion is really in his head. Yet that which is 
inconceivable is manifestly true in all these cases. 
The beliefs and the unbeliefs are alike necessary, 
and alike erroneous. 

It is commonly urged that the axiom of causation 
cannot be derived from experience, because ex- 
perience only proves that many things have causes, 
whereas the axiom declares that all things have 
causes. The syllogism, " many things which come 
into existence have causes. A has come into 
existence : therefore A had a cause," is obviously 
fallacious, if A is not previously shown to be one 
of the " many things." And this objection is 
perfectly sound so far as it goes. The axiom of 
causation cannot possibly be deduced from any 
general proposition which simply embodies ex- 
perience. But it does not follow that the belief, 
or expectation, expressed by the axiom, is not a 
product of experience, generated antecedently to, 
and altogether independently of, the logically un- 
justifiable language in which we express it. 

153 



146 HUME 



VI 



In fact, the axiom of causation resembles all 
other beliefs of expectation in being the verbal 
symbol of a purely automatic act of the mind, 
which is altogether extra-logical, and would be 
illogical, if it were not constantly verified by 
experience. Experience, as we have seen, stores 
up memories ; memories generate expectations or 
beliefs — why they do so may be explained here- 
after by proper investigation of cerebral physiology. 
Bat to seek for the reason of the facts in the 
verbal symbols by which they are expressed, and 
to be astonished that it is not to be found there, 
is surely singular ; and what Hume did was to 
turn attention from the verbal proposition to the 
psychical fact of which it is the symbol. 

"When any natural object or event is presented, it is im- 
possible for us, by any sagacity or penetration, to discover, or 
even conjecture, without experience, what event will result from 
it, or to carry our foresight beyond that object, which is imme- 
diately present to the memory and senses. Even after one 
instance or experiment, where we have observed a particular 
event to follow upon another, we are not entitled to form a 
general rule, or foretell what will happen in like cases ; it being 
justly esteemed an unpardonable temerity to judge of the whole 
course of nature from one single experiment, however accurate 
or certain. But when one particular species of events has 
always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make 
no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of 
the other, and of employing that reasoning which can alone 
assure us of any matter of fact or existence. We then call the 
one object Cause, the other Effect. We suppose that there is 
some connexion between them : some power in the one, by 
which it infallibly produces the other, and operates with the 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 147 

greatest certainty and strongest necessity. . . . But there is 
nothing in a number of instances, different from every single 
instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar ; except only, 
that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by 
habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual 
attendant, and to believe that it will exist. . . . The first time 
a man saw the communication of motion by impulse, as by the 
shock of two billiard balls, he could not pronounce that the one 
event was connected, but only that it was conjoined, with the 
other. After he has observed several instances of this nature, 
he then pronounces them to be connected. What alteration has 
happened to give rise to this new idea of connexion ? Nothing 
but that he now feels these events to be connected in his 
imagination, and can readily foresee the existence of the one 
from the appearance of the other. When we say, therefore, that 
one object is connected with another we mean only that they 
have acquired a connexion in our thought, and give rise to this 
inference, by which they become proofs of each other's exist- 
ence ; a conclusion which is somewhat extraordinary, but which 
seems founded on sufficient evidence." — (IV. pp. 87 — 89.) 

In the fifteenth section of the third part of the 
" Treatise/' under the head of the Rules by which to 
Judge of Causes and Effects, Hume gives a sketch 
of the method of allocating effects to their causes, 
upon which, so far as I am aware, no improvement 
was made down to the time of the publication of 
Mill's " Logic." Of Mill's four methods, that of 
agreement is indicated in the following passage : — - 



" . . . where several different objects produce the same effect, 
it must be by means of some quality which we discover to be 
common amongst them. For as like effects imply like causes, 
we must always ascribe the causation to the circumstance 
wherein we discover the resemblance." — (I. p. 229.) 



148 HUME 



VI 



Next, the foundation of the method of difference 
is stated : — 

" The difference in the effects of two resembling objects must 
proceed from that particular in which they differ. For, as like 
causes always produce like effects, when in any instance we find 
our expectation to be disappointed, we must conclude that this 
irregularity proceeds from some difference in the causes." — 
(I. p. 230.) 

In the succeeding paragraph the method of con- 
comitant variations is foreshadowed. 

" When any object increases or diminishes with the increase 
or diminution of the cause, 'tis to be regarded as a compounded 
effect, derived from the union of the several different effects 
which arise from the several different parts of the cause. The 
absence or presence of one part of the cause is here supposed to 
be always attended with the absence or presence of a proportion- 
able part of the effect. This constant conjunction sufficiently 
proves that the one part is the cause of the other. We must, 
however, beware not to draw such a conclusion from a few 
experiments." — (I. p. 230.) 

Lastly, the following rule, though awkwardly 
stated, contains a suggestion of the method of 
residues : — 

". . . an object which exists for any time in its full perfec- 
tion without any effect, is not the sole cause of that effect, but 
requires to be assisted by some other principle, which may for- 
ward its influence and operation. For as like effects necessarily 
follow from like causes, and in a contiguous time and place, 
their separation for a moment shows that these causes are not 
complete ones." — (I. p. 230.) 

In addition to the bare notion of necessary con- 
nexion between the cause and its effect, we un- 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 149 

doubteclly find in our minds the idea of something 
resident in the cause which, as we say, produces 
the effect, and we call this something Force, Power, 
or Energy. Hume explains Force and Power as 
the results of the association with inanimate causes 
of the feelings of endeavour or resistance which we 
experience, when our bodies give rise to, or resist, 
motion. 

If I throw a ball, I have a sense of effort which 
ends when the ball leaves my hand ; and, if I catch 
a ball, I have a sense of resistance which comes 
to an end with the quiescence of the ball. In the 
former case, there is a strong suggestion of some- 
thing having gone from myself into the ball ; in 
the latter, of something having been received from 
the ball. Let any one hold a piece of iron near a 
strong magnet, and the feeling that the magnet 
endeavours to pull the iron one way, in the same 
manner as he endeavours to pull it in the opposite 
direction, is very strong. 

As Hume says : — 

"No animal can put external bodies in motion without the 
sentiment of a nisus, or endeavour ; and every animal has a 
sentiment or feeling from the stroke or blow of an external 
object that is in motion. These sensations, which are merely- 
animal, and from which we can, cl priori, draw no inference, we 
are apt to transfer to inanimate objects, and to suppose that they 
have some such feelings whenever they transfer or receive 
motion." — (IV. p. 91, note.) 

It is obviously, however, an absurdity not less 



150 HUME VI 

gross than that of supposing the sensation of 
warmth to exist in a fire, to imagine that the sub- 
jective sensation of effort, or resistance, in ourselves 
can be present in external objects, when they stand 
in the relation of causes to other objects. 

To the argument, that we have a right to sup- 
pose the relation of cause and effect to contain 
something more than invariable succession, because, 
when we ourselves act as causes, or in volition, we 
are conscious of exerting power; Hume replies. 
that we know nothing of the feeling we call power 
except as effort or resistance ; and that we have 
not the slightest means of knowing whether it has 
anything to do with the production of bodily 
motion or mental changes. And he points out, 
as Descartes and Spinoza had done before liim, 
that when voluntary motion takes place, that 
which we will is not the immediate consequence 
of the act of volition, but something which is 
separated from it by a long chain of causes and 
effects. If the will is the cause of the movement 
of a limb, it can be so only in the sense that the 
guard who gives the order to go on, is the cause 
of the transport of a train from one station to 
another. 



" VTe learn from anatomy, that the immediate object of power 
in voluntary notion is nor the member itself which is moved, 
but certain muscles and ne^es and animal spirits, and perha] s 
something still more minute and unknown, through which the 
motion is successively propagated, ere it reached the member 



VI CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 151 

itself, whose motion is the immediate object of volition. Can 
there be a more certain proof that the power by which the whole 
operation is performed, so far from being directly and fully 
known by an inward sentiment or consciousness, is to the last 
degree mysterious and unintelligible ? Here the mind wills a 
certain event : Immediately another event, unknown to our- 
selves, and. totally different from the one intended, is produced : 
This event produces another equally unknown : Till at last, 
through a long succession, the desired event is produced." — (IY. 
p. 78.) 

A still stronger argument against ascribing an 
objective existence to force or power, on the 
strength of our supposed direct intuition of power 
in voluntary acts, may be urged from the un- 
questionable fact, that we do not know, and 
cannot know, that volition does cause corporeal 
motion ; while there is a great deal to be said in 
favour of the view that it is no cause, but merely 
a concomitant of that motion. But the nature of 
volition will be more fitly considered hereafter. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ORDER OF NATURE : MIRACLES 

If our beliefs of expectation are based on our 
beliefs of memory, and anticipation is only in- 
verted recollection, it necessarily follows that every 
belief of expectation implies the belief that the 
future will have a certain resemblance to the past. 
From the first hour of experience, onwards, this 
belief is constantly being verified, until old age is 
inclined to suspect that experience has nothing 
new to offer. And when the experience of gener- 
ation after generation is recorded, and a single 
book tells us more than Methuselah could have 
learned, had he spent every waking hour of his 
thousand years in learning; when apparent dis- 
orders are found to be only the recurrent pulses of 
a slow working order, and the wonder of a year 
becomes the commonplace of a century; when 
repeated and minute examination never reveals a 
break in the chain of causes and effects ; and the 



VII ORDER OF NATURE: MIRACLES 153 

whole edifice of practical life is built upon our 
faith in its continuity ; the belief, that that chain 
has never been broken and will never be broken, 
becomes one of the strongest and most justifiable 
of human convictions. And it must be admitted 
to be a reasonable request, if we ask those who 
would have us put faith in the actual occurrence 
of interruptions of that order, to produce evidence 
in favour of their view, not only equal, but su- 
perior, in weight to that which leads us to adopt 
ours. 

This is the essential argument of Hume's 
famous disquisition upon miracles ; and it may 
safely be declared to be irrefragable. But it must 
be admitted that Hume has surrounded the kernel 
of his essay with a shell of very doubtful value. 

The first step in this, as in all other discussions, 
is to come to a clear understanding as to the 
meaning of the terms employed. Argumentation 
whether miracles are possible, and, if possible, 
credible, is mere beating the air until the arguers 
have agreed what they mean by the word 
" miracles." 

Hume, with less than his usual perspicuity, but 
in accordance with a common practice of believers 
in the miraculous, defines a miracle as a " violation 
of the laws of nature," or as " a transgression of a 
law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, 
or by the interposition of some invisible agent." 

There must, he says, — 



154 HUME 



VII 



"be an uniform experience against every miraculous event, 
otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as 
an uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct 
and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence 
of any miracle ; nor can such a proof be destroyed or the miracle 
rendered credible but by an opposite proof which is superior." — 
(IV. p. 134.) 

Every one of these dicta appears to be open to 
serious objection. 

The word " miracle " — miracuhtm, — in its primi- 
tive and legitimate sense, simply means something 
wonderful. 

Cicero applies it as readily to the fancies of 
philosophers, " Portenta et miracula philosophorum 
sonmiantiuni," as we do to the prodigies of priests. 
And the source of the wonder which a miracle 
excites is the belief, on the part of those who 
witness it, that it transcends, or contradicts, 
ordinary experience. 

The definition of a miracle as a "violation of 
the laws of nature " is, in reality, an employment 
of language which, on the face of the matter, 
cannot be justified, For " nature " means neither 
more nor less than that which is ; the sum of 
phenomena presented to our experience; the 
totality of events past, present, and to come. 
Every event must be taken to be a part of nature 
until proof to the contrary is supplied. And 
such proof is, from the nature of the case, im- 
possible. 

Hume asks :— 



VII ORDER OF NATURE: MIRACLES 155 

' ' Why is it more than probable that all men must die : that 
lead cannot of itself remain suspended in the air : that fire con- 
sumes wood and is extinguished by water ; unless it be that 
these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there 
is required a violation of those laws, or in other words a miracle, 
to prevent them ? "—(IV. p. 133.) 



But the reply is obvious ; not one of these events 
is " more than probable " ; though the probability 
may reach such a very high degree that, in 
ordinary language, we are justified in saying that 
the opposite events are impossible. Calling our 
often verified experience a "law of nature" adds 
nothing to its value, nor in the slightest degree 
increases any probability that it will be verified 
again, which may arise out of the fact of its 
frequent verification. 

If a piece of lead were to remain suspended of 
itself, in the air, the occurrence would be a 
" miracle," in the sense of a wonderful event, 
indeed; but no one trained in the methods of 
science would imagine that any law of nature was 
really violated thereby. He would simply set to 
work to investigate the conditions under which so 
highly unexpected an occurrence took place ; and 
thereby enlarge his experience and modify his, 
hitherto, unduly narrow conception of the laws of 
nature. 

The alternative definition, that a miracle is " a 
transgression of a law of nature by a particular 
volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of 



156 HUME 



VII 



some invisible agent," (IV. p. 134, note) is still less 
defensible. For a vast number of miracles have 
professedly been worked, neither by the Deity, 
nor by any invisible agent ; but by Beelzebub and 
his compeers, or by very visible men. 

Moreover, not to repeat what has been said 
respecting the absurdity of supposing that some- 
thing which occurs is a transgression of laws, our 
only knowledge of which is derived from the 
observation of that which occurs ; upon what sort 
of evidence can we be justified in concluding that 
a given event is the effect of a particular volition 
of the Deity, or of the interposition of some 
invisible (that is unperceivable) agent ? It may 
be so, but how is the assertion, that it is so, to be 
tested ? If it be said that the event exceeds the 
power of natural causes, what can justify such a 
saying ? The day-fly has better grounds for call- 
ing a thunderstorm supernatural, than has man, 
with his experience of an infinitesimal fraction of 
duration, to say that the most astonishing event 
that can be imagined is beyond the scope of 
natural causes. 

"Whatever is intelligible and can be distinctly conceived, 
implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any 
demonstration, argument, or abstract reasoning co priori." — (IV. 
p. 44.) 

So wrote Hume, with perfect justice, in his 
" Sceptical Doubts." But a miracle, in the sense of 
a sudden and complete change in the customary 



VII ORDER OF NATURE: MIRACLES 157 

order of nature, is intelligible, can be distinctly 
conceived, implies no contradiction; and there- 
fore, according to Hume's own showing, cannot 
be proved false by any demonstrative argument. 

Nevertheless, in diametrical contradiction to 
his own principles, Hume says elsewhere : — 

"It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life: 
because that has never been observed in any age or country." — 
(IV. p. 134.) 

That is to say, there is an uniform experience 
against such an event, and therefore, if it occurs, 
it is a violation of the laws of nature. Or, to put 
the argument in its naked absurdity, that which 
never has happened never can happen, without a 
violation of the laws of nature. In truth, if a 
dead man did come to life, the fact would be 
evidence, not that any law of nature had been 
violated, but that those laws, even when they ex- 
press the results of a very long and uniform 
experience, are necessarily based on incomplete 
knowledge, and are to be held only as grounds of 
more or less justifiable expectation. 

To sum up, the definition of a miracle as a 
suspension or a contravention of the order of 
Nature is self-contradictory, because all we know 
of the order of nature is derived from our ob- 
servation of the course of events of which the 
so-called miracle is a part. On the other hand, 
no conceivable event, however extraordinary, is 
impossible ; and therefore, if by the term miracles 



158 HUME 



VII 



we mean only " extremely wonderful events/' there 
can be no just ground for denying the possibility 
of their occurrence. 

But when we turn from the question of the 
possibility of miracles, however they may be de- 
fined, in the abstract, to that respecting the 
grounds upon which we are justified in believing 
any particular miracle, Hume's arguments have a 
very different value, for they resolve themselves 
into a simple statement of the dictates of common 
sense — which may be expressed in this canon : the 
more a statement of fact conflicts with previous 
experience, the more complete must be the 
evidence which is to justify us in believing it. It 
is upon this principle that every one carries on the 
business of common life. If a man tells me he saw 
a piebald horse in Piccadilly, I believe him without 
hesitation. The thing itself is likely enough, and 
there is no imaginable motive for his deceiving me. 
But if the same person tells me he observed a zebra 
there, I might hesitate a little about accepting his 
testimony, unless I were well satisfied, not only 
as to his previous acquaintance with zebras, but 
as to his powers and opportunities of obser- 
vation in the present case. If, however, my in- 
formant assured me that he beheld a centaur 
trotting down that famous thoroughfare, I should 
emphatically decline to credit his statement ; and 
this even if he were the most saintly of men and 



VII ORDER OF NATURE : MIRACLES 159 

ready to suffer martyrdom in support of his belief. 
In such a case, I could, of course, entertain no 
doubt of the good faith of the witness ; it would 
be only his competency, which unfortunately has 
very little to do with good faith, or intensity of con- 
viction, which I should presume to call in question. 
Indeed, I hardly know what testimony Avould 
satisfy me of the existence of a live centaur. To 
put an extreme case, suppose the late Johannes 
Muller, of Berlin, the greatest anatomist and 
physiologist among my contemporaries, had barely 
affirmed that he had seen a live centaur, I should 
certainly have been staggered by the weight of an 
assertion coming from such an authority. But I 
could have got no further than a suspension of 
judgment. For, on the whole, it would have been 
more probable that even he had fallen into some 
error of interpretation of the facts which came 
under his observation, than that such an animal 
as a centaur really existed. And nothing short of 
a careful monograph, by a highly competent 
investigator, accompanied by figures and measure- 
ments of all the most important parts of a 
centaur, put forth under circumstances which 
could leave no doubt that falsification or misinter- 
pretation would meet with immediate exposure, 
could possibly enable a man of science to feel that 
he acted conscientiously, in expressing his belief 
in the existence of a centaur on the evidence of 
testimony. 



160 HUME VII 

This hesitation about admitting the existence of 
such an animal as a centaur, be it observed, does 
not deserve reproach, as scepticism, but moderate 
praise, as mere scientific good faith. It need not 
imply, and it does not, so far as I am concerned, 
any a priori hypothesis that a centaur is an 
impossible animal ; or, that his existence, if he did 
exist, would violate the laws of nature. Indubit- 
ably, the organisation of a centaur presents a 
variety of practical difficulties to an anatomist and 
physiologist ; and a good many of those generalisa- 
tions of our present experience, which we are 
pleased to call laws of nature, would be upset by 
the appearance of such an animal, so that we 
should have to frame new laws to cover our 
extended experience. Every wise man will admit 
that the possibilities of nature are infinite, and 
include centaurs ; but he will not the less feel it 
his duty to hold fast, for the present, by the 
dictum of Lucretius, " Nam certe ex vivo Centauri 
non fit imago," and to cast the entire burthen of 
proof, that centaurs exist, on the shoulders of those 
who ask him to believe the statement. 

Judged by the canons either of common sense, 
or of science, which are indeed one and the same, 1 
all " miracles " are centaurs, or they would not be 
miracles ; and men of sense and science will deal 

1 See above (p. 68) the pregnant aphorism, "philosophical 
decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life, method- 
ised and corrected." [1893.] 



VII ORDER OF NATURE; MIRACLES 161 

with them on the same principles. No one who 
wishes to keep well within the limits of that which 
he has a right to assert will affirm that it is im- 
possible that the sun and moon should ever have 
been made to appear to stand still in the valley of 
Ajalon ; or that the walls of a city should have 
fallen down at a trumpet blast ; or that water was 
turned into wine ; because such events are contrary 
to uniform experience and violate laws of nature. 
For aught he can prove to the contrary, such events 
may appear in the order of nature to-morrow. 
But common sense and common honesty alike 
oblige him to demand from those who would have 
him believe in the actual occurrence of such events, 
evidence of a cogency proportionate to their 
departure from probability; evidence at least as 
strong as that, which the man who says he has 
seen a centaur is bound to produce, unless he is 
content to be thought either more than credulous 
or less than honest. 

But are there any miracles on record, the 
evidence for which fulfils the plain and simple 
requirements alike of elementary logic and of 
elementary morality ? 

Hume answers this question without the small- 
est hesitation, and with all the authority of a 
historical specialist : — 

"There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested 
by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned goodness, 
education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in 

154 



162 HUME VII 

themselves ; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them 
beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others ; of such 
credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a 
great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any false- 
hood ; and at the same time attesting facts, performed in such a 
public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to 
render the detection unavoidable : All which circumstances 
are requisite to give us a full assurance of the testimony of men." 
—(IV. p. 135.) 

These are grave assertions ; but they are least 
likely to be challenged by those who have made 
it their business to weigh evidence and to give 
their decision, under a due sense of the moral 
responsibility which they incur in so doing. 

It is probable that few persons who proclaim 
their belief in miracles have considered what 
would be necessary to justify that belief in the 
case of a professed modern miracle-worker. Sup- 
pose, for example, it is affirmed that A.B. died 
and that CD. brought him to life again. Let it 
be granted that A.B. and CD. are persons of 
unimpeachable honour and veracity ; that CD. is 
the next heir to A.B.'s estate, and therefore had 
a strong motive for not bringing him to life again ; 
and that all A.B.'s relations, respectable persons 
who bore him a strong affection, or had otherwise 
an interest in his being alive, declared that they 
saw him die. Furthermore, let A.B. be seen after 
his recovery by all his friends and neighbours, and 
let his and their depositions, that he is now alive, 
be taken down before a magistrate of known 



VII ORDER OF NATURE; MIRACLES 163 

integrity and acuteness : wouIg all this constitute 
even presumptive evidence that CD. had worked 
a miracle ? Unquestionably not. For the most 
important link in the whole chain of evidence is 
wanting, and that is the proof that A.B. was really 
dead. The evidence of ordinary observers on such 
a point as this is absolutely worthless. And, even 
medical evidence, unless the physician is a person 
of unusual knowledge and skill, may have little 
more value. Unless careful thermometric observa- 
tion proves that the temperature has sunk below 
a certain point ; unless the cadaveric stiffening of 
the muscles has become well established ; all the 
ordinary signs of death may be fallacious, and the 
intervention of CD. may have had no more to do 
withA.B/s restoration to life than any other fortuit- 
ously coincident event. 

It may be said that such a coincidence would 
be more wonderful than the miracle itself. Never- 
theless history acquaints us with coincidences as 
marvellous. 

On the 19th of February, 1842, Sir Robert Sale 
held Jellalabad with a small English force and, 
daily expectiug attack from an overwhelming 
force of Afghans, had spent three months in in- 
cessantly labouring to improve the fortifications of 
the town. Akbar Khan had approached within 
a few miles, and an onslaught of his armv was 
supposed to be imminent. That morning an 
earthquake — 



■? 






164 HUME VII 

" nearly destroyed the tr wn, threw down the greater part of the 
parapets, the central g&ce with the adjoining bastions, and a 
part of the new bastion which flanked it. Three other bastions 
were also nearly destroyed, whilst several large breaches were 
made in the curtains, and the Peshawur side, eighty feet long, 
was quite practicable, the ditch being filled, and the descent easy. 
Thus, in one moment, the labours of three months were in a great 
measure destroyed." 1 

If Akbar Khan had happened to give orders 
for an assault in the early morning of the 19th of 
February, what good follower of the Prophet could 
have doubted that Allah had lent his aid ? As it 
chanced, however, Mahometan faith in the miracu- 
lous took another turn ; for the energetic defenders 
of the post had repaired the damage by the end of 
the month ; and the enemy, finding no signs of 
the earthquake when they invested the place, 
ascribed the supposed immunity of Jellalabad to 
English witchcraft. 

But the conditions of belief do not vary with 
time or place ; and, if it is undeniable that evidence 
of so complete and weighty a character is needed, 
at the present time, for the establishment of 
the occurrence of such a wonder as that sup- 
posed, it has always been needful. Those who 
study the extant records of miracles with due 
attention will judge for themselves how far it has 
ever been supplied. 

1 Report of Captain Broadfoot, garrison engineer, quoted in 
Kaye's Afghanistan. 



CHAPTER VIII 
\ 
theism; evolution of theology 

Hume seems to have had but two hearty dislikes ; 
the one to the English nation, and the other to all 
the professors of dogmatic theology. The one 
aversion he vented only privately to his friends ; X^> 

but, if he is ever bitter in his public utterances, 
it is against priests 1 in general and theological 
enthusiasts and fanatics in particular ; if he ever 
seems insincere, it is when he wishes to insult 
theologians by a parade of sarcastic respect. One 
need go no further than the peroration of the 
" Essay on Miracles " for a characteristic illustra- 
tion. 

1 In a note to the Essay on Superstition and Enthusiasm, 
Hume is careful to define what he means by this term. ' ' By 
priests I understand only the pretenders to power and dominion, 
and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and 
good morals. These are very different from clergymen, who are 
set apart to the care of sacred matters, and the conducting our 
public devotions with greater decency and order.. There is 
no rank of men more to be respected than the latter." — (III. p. 
83.) 



166 HUME VIII 

"lam the better pleased with the method of reasoning here 
delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous 
friends and disguised enemies to the Christian Religion who 
have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. 
Our most holy religion is founded on Ikith, not on reason, and 
it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is 
by no means fitted to endure. ... the Christian religion not 
only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day 
cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. 
Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity : And 
whoever ^ moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a 
conrinuil miracle in his own person, which subverts all the 
principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination 
to brieve what is most contrary to custom and experience. "— 
ml pp. 153, 154.) 

It is obvious that, here and elsewhere, Hume, 
adopting a popular confusion of ideas, uses religion 
as the equivalent of dogmatic theology ; and, 
therefore, he says, with perfect justice, that 
" religion is nothing but a species of philosophy " 
(iv. p 171). Here no doubt lies the root of his 
antagonism. The quarrels of theologians and 
philosophers have not been about religion, but 
about philosophy ; and philosophers not unfre- 
quently seem to entertain the same feeling 
towards theologians that sportsmen cherish 
towards poachers. " There cannot be two passions 
more nearly resembling each other than hunting 
and philosophy," says Hume. And philosophic 
hunters are given to think, that, while they pursue 
truth for its own sake, out of pure love for the 
chase (perhaps mingled with a little human weak- 



VIII THEISM ; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 167 

ness to be thought good shots), and by open and 
legitimate methods ; their theological competitors 
too often care merely to supply the market of 
establishments ; and disdain neither the aid of 
the snares of superstition, nor the cover of the 
darkness of ignorance. 

Unless some foundation was given for this im- 
pression by the theological writers whose works 
had fallen in Hume's way, it is difficult to account 
for the depth of feeling which so good-natured a 
man manifests on the subject. . 

Thus he writes in the " Natural History of 
Religion," with quite unusual acerbity : 

"The chief objection to it [the ancient heathen mythology] 
with regard to this planet is, that it is not ascertained by any 
just reason or authority. The ancient tradition insisted on by 
heathen priests and theologers is but a weak foundation : and 
transmitted also such a number of contradictory reports, sup- 
ported all of them by equal authority, that it became absolutely 
impossible to fix a preference among them. : A few volumts, 
therefore, must contain all the polemical writings of paga? 
priests : And their whole theology must consist more of tradi- 
tional stories and superstitious practices than of philosophical 
argument and controversy. 

" But where theism forms the fundamental principle of any 
popular religion, that tenet is so conformable to sound reason, 
that philosophy is apt to incorporate itself with such a system 
of theology. And if the other dogmas of that system be con- 
tained in a sacred book, such as the Alcoran, or be determined 
by any visible authority, like that of the Koman pontiff, 
speculative reasoners naturally carry on their assent, and em- 
brace a theory, which has been instilled into them by their 
earliest education, and which also possesses some degree of 
sonsistence and uniformity. But as these appearances are sure, 



\ 



168 HUME 



VIII 



all of them, to prove deceitful, philosophy will very soon find 
herself very unequally yoked with her new associate ; and 
instead of regulating each principle, as they advance together, 
she is at every turn perverted to serve the purposes of supersti- 
tion. For besides the unavoidable incoherences, which must be 
reconciled and adjusted, one may safely affirm, that all popular 
theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of appetite for 
absurdity and contradiction. If that theology went not beyond 
reason and common sense, her doctrines would appear too easy 
and familiar. Amazement must of necessity be raised : 
Mystery affected : Darkness and obscurity sought after : And a 
foundation of merit afforded to the devout votaries, who desire 
an opportunity of subduing their rebellious reason by the belief 
of the most unintelligible sophisms. 

"Ecclesiastical history sufficiently confirms these reflections. 
When a controversy is started, some people always pretend 
with certainty to foretell the issue. Whichever opinion, say 
they, is most contrary to plain reason is sure to prevail ; even 
when the general interest of the system requires not that 
decisicn. Though the reproach of heresy may, for some time, 
be bandied about among the disputants, it always rests at last 
on the side of reason. Any one, it is pretended, that has but 
learning enough of this kind to know the definition of Arian, 
Pelagian, Erastian, Socinian, Sabellian, Eutyehian, Nestorian, 
Monothelite, &c, not to mention Protestant, whose fate is yet 
uncertain, will be convinced of the truth of this observation. 
It is thus a system becomes absurd in the end, merely from its 
being reasonable and philosophical in the beginning. 

"To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble 
maxims as these, that it is impossible for the same thing to be 
and not to be, that the ivhole is greater than a part, that two and 
three make jive, is pretending to stop the ocean with a bulrush. 
Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery ? No 
punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same 
fires which were kindled for heretics will serve also for the 
destruction of philosophers." — (IV. pp. 481 — 3.) 

Holding these opinions respecting the recognised 



\ 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 169 

systems of theology and their professors, Hume, 
nevertheless, seems to have had a theology of his 
own; that is to say, he seems to have thought 
(though, as will appear, it is needful for an expositor 
of his opinions to speak very guardedly on 
this point) that the problem of theism is suscept- 
ible of scientific treatment, with something more 
than a negative result. His opinions are to be 
gathered from the eleventh section of the "Inquiry" 
(1748); from the "Dialogues concerning Natural 
Religion/' which were written at least as early as 
1751, though not published till after his death; 
and from the " Natural History of Religion," pub- 
lished in 1757. 

In the first two pieces, the reader is left to judge 
for himself which interlocutor in the dialogue 
represents the thoughts of the author ; br>t for the 
views put forward in the last, Hume acc^tj 
responsibility. Unfortunately, this essay 
almost wholly with the historical development of 
theological ideas ; and, on the question of the 
philosophical foundation of theology, does little 
more than express the writer's contentment witt 
the argument from design. 

" The whole frame of nature bespeaks an Intelligent 
Author ; and no rational inquirer can, after serious reflection, 
suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary prin- 
ciples of genuine Theism and Religion.— (IV. p. 435.) 

""Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intel- 
ligent power, by a contemplation of the works of nature, they 
could never possibly entertain any conception but of one 




170 HUME 



viii 



single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast 
machine, and adjusted all its parts according to one regular 
plan or connected system. For though, to persons of a 
certain turn of mind, it may not appear altogether absurd, 
that several independent beings, endowed with superior 
wisdom, might conspire in the contrivance and execution of 
one regular plan, yet is this a merely arbitrary supposition, 
which, even if allowed possible, must be confessed neither to 
be supported by probability nor necessity. All things in the 
universe are evidently of a piece. Everything is adjusted to 
everything. One design prevails throughout the whole. And 
this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one author ; 
because the conception of different authors, without any dis- 
tinction of attributes or operations, serves only to give per- 
plexity to the imagination, without bestowing any satisfaction 
on the understanding." — (IV. p. 442.) 

Thus Eume appears to have sincerely accepted 
the two fundamental conclusions of the argument 
from design ; firstly, that a Deity exists ; and, 
secondly, that He possesses attributes more or less 
allied to those of human intelligence. But, at this 
embryonic stage of theology, Hume's progress is 
arrested ; and, after a survey of the development 
of dogma, his " general corollary " is that — 

" The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. 
Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment, appear the only 
result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. 
But such is the frailty of human reason and such the irre- 
sistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt 
could scarcely be upheld ; did we not enlarge our view, and 
opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a 
quarrelling ; while we ourselves, during their fury and con- 
tention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, 
regions of philosophy. " — (IV. p. 513.) 



VIII THEISM ; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 171 

Thus it may be fairly presumed that Hume ex- 
presses his own sentiments in the words of the 
speech with which Philo concludes the "Dialogues/' 

1 ' If the whole of natural theology, as some people seem to 
maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat 
ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, That the cause or 
causes of order in the universe 'probably bear some remote analogy 
to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of 
extension, variation, or more particular explication : If it 
affords no inference that affects human life or can be the 
source of any action or forbearance : And if the analogy, 
imperfect as it is, can be carried no further than to the human 
intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance 
of probability, to the other qualities of the mind ; if this really 
be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, 
and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical 
assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs, and believe 
that the arguments on which it is established exceed the 
objections which lie against it ? Some astonishment indeed 
will naturally arise from the greatness of the object ; some 
melancholy from its obscurity ; some contempt of human 
reason, that it can give no solution more satisfactory with 
regard to so extraordinary and magnificent a question. But 
believe me, Cleanthes, the most natural sentiment which a 
well-disposed mind will feel on this occasion, is a longing 
desire and expectation that Heaven would be pleased to dis- 
sipate, at least alleviate, this profound ignorance, by affording 
some more particular revelation to mankind, and making 
discoveries of the nature, attributes, and operations of the 
Divine object of our faith." 1 — (II. pp. 547 — 8.) 

1 It is needless to quote the rest of the passage, though I cannot 
refrain from observing that the recommendation which it contains 
that a "man of letters " should become a philosophical sceptic as 
"the first and most essential step towards being a sound believing 
Christian," though adopted and largely acted upon by many a 
champion of orthodoxy in these days, is questionable in taste, if it 



172 HUME VIII 

Such being the sum total of Hume's conclusions 
it cannot be said that his theological burden is a 
heavy one. But, if we turn from the " Natural 
History of Religion," to the "Treatise," the 
"Inquiry," and the " Dialogues," the story of what 
happened to the ass laden with salt, who took to the 
water, irresistibly suggests itself. Hume's theism, 
such as it is, dissolves away in the dialectic river, 
until nothing is left but the verbal sack in which 
it was contained. 

Of the two theistic propositions to which Hume 
is committed, the first is the affirmation of the 
existence of a God, supported by the argument 
from the nature of causation. In the " Dialogues," 
Philo, while pushing scepticism to its utmost 
limit, is nevertheless made to say that — 



"... . where reasonable men treat these subjects, the ques- 
tion can never be concerning the Being, but only the Nature of 
the Deity. The former truth, as you will observe, is unquestion- 
able and self-evident. Nothing exists without a cause, and the 
original cause of this universe (whatever it be) we call God, 
and piously ascribe to him every species of perfection." — (II. p. 
439.) 

The expositor of Hume, who wishes to do his 
work thoroughly, as far as it goes, cannot but fall 



be meant as a jest, and more than questionable in morality, if it is 
to be taken in earnest. To pretend that you believe anydoctrine 
for no better reason than that you doubt everything else, would be 
dishonest, if it were not preposterous. 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 173 

into perplexity 1 when he contrasts this language 
with that of the sections of the third part of the 
" Treatise," entitled, Why a Cause is Always Neces- 
sary and Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion. 

It is there shown at large that, "every demonstra- 
tion which has been produced for the necessity of a 
cause is fallacious and sophistical' (I. p. Ill) ; it 
is affirmed, that "there is no absolute nor meta- 
physical necessity that every beginning of existence 
should be attended with such an object " [as a 
cause] (I. p. 227) ; and it is roundly asserted, that 

1 A perplexity which is increased rather than diminished by 
some passages in a letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto (March 10, 
1751). Hume says, "You would perceive by the sample I 
have given you that I make Cleanthes the hero of the dialogue ; 
whatever you can think of, to strengthen that side of the argu- 
ment, will be most acceptable to me. Any propensity you 
imagine I have to the other side crept in upon me against my 
will; and 'tis not long ago that I burned an old manuscript 
book, wrote before I was twenty, which contained, page after 
page, the gradual progress of my thoughts on this head. It 
began with an anxious scent after arguments to confirm the 
common opinion ; doubts stole in, dissipated, returned ; were 
again dissipated, returned again ; and it was a perpetual struggle 
of a restless imagination against inclination — perhaps against 
reason. ... I could wish Cleanthes' argument could be so 
analysed as to be rendered quite formal and regular. The pro- 
pensity of the mind towards it — unless that propensity were as 
strong and universal as that to believe in our senses and exper- 
ience — will still, I am afraid, be esteemed a suspicious founda- 
tion. 'Tishere I wish for your assistance. We must endeavour 
to prove that this propensity is somewhat different from our 
inclination to find our own figures in the clouds, our faces in the 
moon, our passions and sentiments even in inanimate matter. 
Such an inclination may and ought to be controlled, and can never 
be a legitimate ground of assent." (Burton, Life, I. pp. 331 — 
3. ) The picture of Hume here drawn unconsciously by his own 
hand, is unlike enough to the popular conception of him as a 
careles3 sceptic, loving doubt for doubt's sake. 



174 HUME 



VIII 



it is " easy for us to conceive any object to be non- 
existent this moment and existent the next, with- 
out conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or 
productive principle " (I. p. 111). So far from the 
axiom, that whatever begins to exist must have a 
cause of existence, being "self-evident," as Philo 
calls it, Hume spends the greatest care in showing 
that it is nothing but the product of custom, or 
experience. 

And the doubt thus forced upon one, whether 
Philo ought to be taken as Hume's mouthpiece 
even so far, is increased when we reflect that we 
are dealing with an acute reasoner ; and that 
there is no difficulty in drawing the deduction 
from Hume's own definition of a cause, that the 
very phrase, a " first cause," involves a contradic- 
tion in terms. He lays down that, — 

" 'Tis an established axiom both in natural and moral phil- 
osophy, that an object, which exists for any time in its full 
perfection without producing another, is not its sole cause ; but 
is assisted by some other principle which pushes it from its state 
of inactivity, and makes it exert that energy, of which it was 
secretly possessed." — (I. p. 106.) 

Now the " first cause ' is assumed to have ex- 
isted from all eternity, up to the moment at which 
the universe came into existence. Hence it cannot 
be the sole cause of the universe ; in fact, it was 
no cause at all until it was "assisted by some 
other principle " ; consequently the so-called 
" first cause/' so far as it produces the universe, 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 175 

is in reality an effect of that other principle. 
Moreover, though, in the person of Philo, Hume 
assumes the axiom l< that whatever begins to exist 
must have a cause," which he denies in the 
" Treatise," he must have seen, for a child may see, 
that the assumption is of no real service. 

Suppose Y to be the imagined first cause and 
Z to be its effect. Let the letters of the alphabet, 
a, b, c, d, e, f] g, in their order, represent successive 
moments of time, and let g represent the partic- 
ular moment at which the effect Z makes its 
appearance. It follows that the cause Y could 
not have existed " in its full perfection ' during 
the time a — e, for if it had, then the effect Z would 
have come into existence during that time, which, 
by the hypothesis, it did not do. The cause Y, 
therefore, must have come into existence at/, and if 
" everything that comes into exitsence has a cause," 
Y must have had a cause X operating at e, X a cause 
W operating at d ; and so on, ad infinitum. 1 

If the only demonstrative argument for the ex- 
istence of a Deity, which Hume advances, thus 
literally, " goes to water " in the solvent of his 
philosophy, the reasoning from the evidence of 
design does not fare much better. If Hume really 

1 Kant employs substantially the same argument : — " Wiirde 
das hochste Wesen in dieser Kette der Bedingungen stehen, so 
wiirde es selbst ein Glied der Reihe derselben sein, uud eben so 
wie die niederen Glieder, denen es vorgesetzt ist, noch fernere 
Untersuchungen wegen seines noch hoheren Grundes erfahren." 
— Kritilc. Ed. Hartenstein, p. 422, 



176 HUME 



VIII 



knew of any valid reply to Philo's arguments in 
the following passages of the " Dialogues/' he has 
dealt unfairly by the reader in concealing it : — 

" But because I know you are not much swayed by names 
and authorities, I shall endeavour to show you, a little more 
distinctly, the inconveniences of that Anthropomorphism, which 
you have embraced ; and shall prove that there is no ground 
to suppose a plan of the world to be formed in the Divine 
mind, consisting of distinct ideas, differently arranged, in the 
same manner as an architect forms in his head the plan of a 
house which he intends to execute. 

"It is not easy, I own, to see what is gained by this sup- 
position, whether we judge the matter by Reason or by Exper- 
ience. We are still obliged to mount higher in order to find 
the cause of this cause, which you had assigned as satisfactory 
and conclusive. 

"If Reason (I mean abstract reason, derived from inquiries ci 
'priori) be not alike mute with regard to all questions concern- 
ing cause and effect, this sentence at least it will venture to 
pronounce : That a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires 
a cause as much as does a material world or universe of 
objects ; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a 
similar cause. For what is there in this subject, which should 
occasion a different conclusion or inference ? In an abstract 
view they are entirely alike ; and no difficulty attends the one 
supposition, which is not common to both of them. 

* ' Again, when we will needs force Experience to pronounce 
some sentence, even on those subjects which lie beyond her 
sphere, neither can she perceive any material difference in this 
particular, between these two kinds of worlds ; but finds them 
to be governed by similar principles, and to depend upon an 
equal variety of causes in their operations. We have specimens 
in miniature of both of them. Our own mind resembles the 
one ; a vegetable or animal body the other. Let experience, 
therefore, judge from these samples. Nothing seems more 
delicate, with regard to its causes, than thought : and as these 
causes never operate in two persons after the same manner, so 



*7*v 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 177 

we never find two persons who think exactly alike. Nor indeed 
does the same person think exactly alike at any two different 
periods of time. A difference of age, of the disposition of his 
body, of weather, of food, of company, of books, of passions ; 
any of these particulars, or others more minute, are sufficient to 
alter the curious machinery of thought, and communicate to it 
very different movements and operations. As far as we can 
judge, vegetables and animal bodies are not more delicate in 
their motions, nor depend upon a greater variety or more 
curious adjustment of springs and principles. 

"How, therefore, shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the 
cause of that Being whom you suppose the Author of Nature, 
or, according to your system of anthropomorphism, the ideal 
world in which you trace the material ? Have we not the 
same reason to trace the ideal world into another ideal world, 
or new intelligent principle ? But if we stop and go no 
farther ; why go so far ? Why not stop at the material world ? 
How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum ? 
And after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite pro- 
gression ? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher 
and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the 
present subject. If the material world rests upon a similar 
ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other ; and 
so on without end. It were better, therefore, never to look 
beyond the present material world. By supposing it to contain 
the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be 
God ; and the sooner we arrive at that Divine Being, so much 
the better. When you go one step beyond the mundane system 
you only excite an inquisitive humour, which it is impossible 
ever to satisfy. 

"To say, that the different ideas which compose the reason 
of the Supreme Being, fall into order of themselves and by 
their own natures, is really to talk without any precise mean- 
ing. If it has a meaning, I would fain know why it is not 
as good sense to say, that the parts of the material world 
fall into order of themselves, and by their own nature. Can 
the one opinion be intelligible while the other is not so ? " 
—(II. pp. 461—4.) 
155 



178 HUME VIII 

Cleanthes, in replying to Philo's discourse, says 
that it is very easy to answer his arguments ; but, 
as not unfrequently happens with controversialists, 
he mistakes a reply for an answer, when he 
declares that — 

"The order and arrangement of nature, the curious adjust- 
ment of final causes, the plain use and intention of every part 
and organ ; all these bespeak in the clearest language one 
intelligent cause or author. The heavens and the earth 
join in the same testimony. The whole chorus of nature 
raises one hymn to the praises of its Creator." — (II. p. 
465.) 

Though the rhetoric of Cleanthes may be 
admired, its irrelevancy to the point at issue 
must be admitted. Wandering still further into 
the region of declamation, he works himself into 
a passion : 

" You alone, or almost alone, disturb this general harmony. 
You start abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections : You ask me 
what is the cause of this cause ? I know not : I care not : 
that concerns not me. I have found a Deity ; and here I 
stop my inquiry. Let those go further who are wiser or 
more enterprising." — (II. p. 466.) 

In other words, O Cleanthes, reasoning having 
taken you as far as you want to go, you decline 
to advance any further; even though you fully 
admit that the very same reasoning forbids you 
to stop where you are pleased to cry halt ! But 
this is simply forcing your reason to abdicate in 
favour of your caprice. It is impossible to 
imagine that Hume, of all men in the world, 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 179 

could have rested satisfied with such an act of 
high-treason against the sovereignty of philosophy. 
We may rather conclude that the last word of 
the discussion, which he gives to Philo, is also his 
own. 

" If I am still to remain in utter ignorance of causes, and 
can absolutely give an explication of nothing, I shall never 
esteem it any advantage to shove off for a moment a diffi- 
culty, which, you acknowledge, must immediately, in its 
full force, recur upon me. Naturalists l indeed very justly 
explain particular effects by more general causes, though 
these general causes should remain in the end totally inex- 
plicable ; but they never surely thought it satisfactory to 
explain a particular effect by a particular cause, which was 
no more to be accounted for than the effect itself. An 
ideal system, arranged of itself, without a precedent design, 
is not a whit more explicable than a material one, which 
attains its order in a like manner ; nor is there any more 
difficulty in the latter supposition than in the former." — (II. p. 
466.) 

It is obvious that, if Hume had been pushed, 
he must have admitted that his opinion concerning 
the existence of a God, and of a certain remote 
resemblance of his intellectual nature to that of 
man, was an hypothesis which might possess more 
or less probability, but, on his own principles, 
was incapable of any approach to demonstration. 
And to all attempts to make any practical use 
of his theism ; or to prove the existence of the 
attributes of infinite wisdom, benevolence, justice, 
and the like, which are usually ascribed to the 

1 I.e. Natural philosophers. 



180 HUME 



VIII 



Deity, by reason, he opposes a searching critical 
negation. 1 

The object of the speech of the imaginary 
Epicurean in the eleventh section of the "Inquiry," 
entitled "Of a Particular Providence and of a 
Future State," is to invert the argument of Bishop 
Butler's "Analogy." 

That famous defence of theology against the 
a priori scepticism of Freethinkers of the 
eighteenth century, who based their arguments 
on the inconsistency of the revealed scheme of 
salvation with the attributes of the Deity, consists, 
essentially, in conclusively proving that, from a 
moral point of view, Nature is at least as repre- 
hensible as orthodoxy. If you tell me, says 
Butler, in effect, that any part of revealed 
religion must be false because it is inconsistent 
with the divine attributes of justice and mercy ; 
I beg leave to point out to you, that there are 
undeniable natural facts which are fully open to 
the same objection. Since you admit that nature 
is the work of God, you are forced to allow that 
such facts are consistent with his attributes. 
Therefore, you must also admit, that the parallel 
facts in the scheme of orthodoxy are also con- 
sistent with them, and all your arguments to the 
contrary fall to the ground. Q.E.D. In fact, the 

1 Hume's letter to Mure of Caldwell, containing a criticism 
of Leechman's sermon (Burton, I. p. 163), bears strongly on 
this point. 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 181 

solid sense of Butler left the Deism of the 
Freethinkers not a leg to stand upon. Perhaps, 
however, he did not remember the wise saying 
that " A man seemeth right in his own cause, but 
another cometh after and judgeth him. ,, Hume's 
Epicurean philosopher adopts the main arguments 
of the " Analogy," but unfortunately drives them 
home to a conclusion of which the good Bishop 
would hardly have approved. 

e ' I deny a Providence, you say, and supreme governor of 
the world, who guides the course of events, and punishes the 
vicious with infamy and disappointment, and rewards the 
virtuous with honour and success in all their undertakings. 
But surely I deny not the course itself of events which lies 
open to every one's inquiry and examination. I acknowledge 
that, in the present order of things, virtue is attended with 
more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favour 
able reception from the world. I am sensible that, according 
to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy 
of human life, and moderation the only source of tranquillity 
and happiness. I never balance between the virtuous and the 
vicious course of life ; but am sensible that, to a well-disposed 
mind, every advantage is on the side of the former. And what 
can you say more, allowing all your suppositions and reason- 
ings ? You tell me, indeed, that this disposition of things pro- 
ceeds from intelligence and design. But, whatever it proceeds 
from, the disposition itself, on which depends our happiness 
and misery, and consequently our conduct and deportment in 
life, is still the same. It is still open for me, as well as you, 
to regulate my behaviour by my experience of past events. 
And if you affirm that, while a divine providence is allowed, 
and a supreme distributive justice in the universe, I ought to 
expect some more particular reward of the good, and pun- 
ishment of the bad, beyond the ordinary course of events, I 
here find the same fallacy which I have before endeavoured 



182 HUME 



VIII 



to detect. You persist in imagining, that if we grant that 
divine existence for which you so earnestly contend, you may 
safely infer consequences from it, and add something to the 
experienced order of nature by arguing from the attributes 
which you ascribe to your gods. You seem not to remember 
that all your reasonings on this subject can only be drawn 
from effects to causes ; and that every argument, deduced from 
causes to effects, must of necessity be a gross sophism, since 
it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause, but 
what you have antecedently not inferred, but discovered to the 
full, in the effect. 

"But what must a philosopher think of those vain reasoners 
who, instead of regarding the present scene of things as the 
sole object of their contemplation, so far reverse the whole 
course of nature, as to render this life merely a passage to 
something further ; a porch, which leads to a greater and 
vastly different building ; a prologue which serves only to 
introduce the piece, and give it more grace and propriety ? 
Whence, do you think, can such philosophers derive their 
idea of the gods ? From their own conceit and imagination 
surely. For if they derive it from the present phenomena, 
it would never point to anything further, but must be exactly 
adjusted to them. That the divinity may possibly be endowed 
with attributes which we have never seen exerted ; may be 
governed by principles of action which we cannot discover to 
be satisfied ; all this will freely be allowed. But still this is 
mere possibility and hypothesis. We never can have reason 
to infer any attributes or any principles of action in him, but 
so far as we know tlfem to have been exerted and satisfied. 

"Are there any marks of a distributive justice in the ivorld? 
If you answer in the affirmative, I conclude that since justice 
here exerts itself, it is satisfied. If you reply in the negative, 
I conclude that you have then no reason to ascribe justice, in 
our sense of it, to the gods. If you hold a medium between 
affirmation and negation, by saying that the justice of the gods 
at present exerts itself in part, but not in its full extent, I 
answer that you have no reason to give it any particular 
extent, but only so far as you see it, at present t exert itself." 
(IV, pp. 164—6.) 



vni THEISM ; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 183 

Thus, the Freethinkers said, the attributes of 
the Deity being what they are, the scheme of 
orthodoxy is inconsistent with them ; whereupon 
Butler gave the crushing reply: Agreeing with 
you as to the attributes of the Deity, nature, by 
its existence, proves that the things to which you 
object are quite consistent with them. To whom 
enters Hume's Epicurean with the remark : Then, 
as nature is our only measure of the attributes of 
the Deity in their practical manifestation, what 
warranty is there for supposing that such measure 
is anywhere transcended ? That the " other side " 
of nature, if there be one, is governed on different 
principles from this side ? 

Truly on this topic silence is golden; while 
speech reaches not even the dignity of sounding 
brass or tinkling cymbal, and is but the weary 
clatter of an endless logomachy. One can but 
suspect that Hume also had reached this con- 
viction ; and that his shadowy and inconsistent 
theism was the expression of his desire to rest in 
a state of mind, which distinctly excluded nega- 
tion, while it included as little as possible of 
affirmation, respecting a problem which he felt 
to be hopelessly insoluble. 

But, whatever might be the views of the 
philosopher as to the arguments for theism, the 
historian could have no doubt respecting its 
many-shaped existence, and the great part which 
it has played in the world. Here, then, was a 



184 HUME 



VIII 



body of natural facts to be investigated scientific- 
ally, and the result of Hume's inquiries is 
embodied in the remarkable, essay on the 
"Natural History of Religion." Hume antici- 
pated the results of modern investigation in 
declaring fetishism and polytheism to be the 
form in which savage and ignorant men naturally 
clothe their ideas of the unknown influences 
which govern their destiny ; and they are poly- 
theists rather than monotheists because, — 



n 



. The first ideas of religion arose, not from a contem- 
plation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard 
to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears 
which actuate the human mind. ... in order to carry men's 
attention beyond the present course of things, or lead them 
into any inference concerning invisible intelligent power, they 
must be actuated by some passion which prompts their thought 
and reflection, some motive which urges their first enquiry. 
But what passion shall we have recourse to, for explaining an 
effect of such mighty consequence ? Not speculative curiosity 
merely, or the pure love of truth. That motive is too refined 
for such gross apprehensions, and would lead men into enquiries 
concerning the frame of nature, a subject too large and compre- 
hensive for their narrow capacities. No passions, therefore, can 
be supposed to work on such barbarians, but the ordinary affec- 
tions of human life ; the anxious concern for happiness, the 
dread of future misery, the terror of death, the thirst of re- 
venge, the appetite for food and other necessaries. Agitated by 
hopes and fears of this nature, especially the latter, men scru- 
tinize, with a trembling curiosity, the course of future causes, 
and examine the various and contrary events of human life. 
And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disordered 
and astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity. "— 
(IV. pp. 443—4.) 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 185 

The shape assumed by these first traces of 
divinity is that of the shadows of men's own 
minds, projected out of themselves by their 
imaginations : — 

" There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive 
all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those 
qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of 
which they are intimately conscious. . . . The unknown causes 
which continually employ their thought, appearing always in 
the same aspect, are all apprehended to be of the same kind or 
species. Nor is it long before we ascribe to them thought, and 
reason, and passion, and sometimes even the limbs and figures 
of men in order to bring them nearer to a resemblance with 
ourselves. "—(IV. pp. 446—7.) 

Hume asks whether polytheism really deserves 
the name of theism. 

"Our ancestors in Europe, before the revival of letters, 
believed as we do at present, that there was one supreme God, 
the author of nature, whose power, though in itself uncontrol- 
lable, was yet often exerted by the interposition of his angels 
and subordinate ministers, who executed his sacred purposes. 
But they also believed, that all nature was full of other invisible 
powers : fairies, goblins, elves, sprights ; beings stronger and 
mightier than men, but much inferior to the celestial natures 
who surround the throne of God. Now, suppose that any one, 
in these ages, had denied the existence of God and of his angels, 
would not his impiety justly have deserved the appellation of 
atheism, even though he had still allowed, by some odd capri- 
cious reasoning, that the popular stories of elves and fairies were 
just and well grounded ? The difference, on the one hand, 
between such a person and a genuine theist, is infinitely greater 
than that, on the other, between him and one that absolutely 
excludes all invisible intelligent power. And it is a fallacy, 
merely from the casual resemblance of names, without any 



186 HUME 



VIII 



conformity of meaning, to rank such opposite opinions under 
the same denomination. 

"To any one who considers justly of the matter, it will 
appear that the gods of the polytheists are no better than the 
elves and fairies of our ancestors, and merit as little as any pious 
worship and veneration. These pretended religionists are really 
a kind of superstitious atheists, and acknowledge no being that 
corresponds to our idea of a Deity. No first principle of mind 
or thought ; no supreme government and administration ; no 
divine contrivance or intention in the fabric of the world." — 
(IY. pp. 450—51.) 

The doctrine that you may call an atheist 
anybody whose ideas about the Deity do not 
correspond with your own, is so largely acted 
upon by persons who are certainly not of Hume's 
way of thinking and, probably, so far from having 
read him, would shudder to open any book 
bearing his name, except the " History of England/' 
that it is surprising to trace the theory of their 
practice to such a source. 

But on thinking the matter over, this theory 
seems so consonant with reason, that one feels 
ashamed of having suspected many excellent 
persons of being moved by mere malice and 
viciousness of temper to call other folks atheists, 
when, after all, they have been obeying a purely 
intellectual sense of fitness. As Hume says, truly 
enough, it is a mere fallacy, because two people 
use the same names for things, the ideas of which 
are mutually exclusive, to rank such opposite 
opinions under the same denomination. If the 



VIII THEISM ; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 187 

Jew says, that the Deity is absolute unity, and 
that it is sheer blasphemy to say that He ever 
became incarnate in the person of a man ; and, if 
the Trinitarian says, that the Deity is numerically 
three as well as numerically one, and that it is 
sheer blasphemy to say that He did not so become 
incarnate, it is obvious enough that each must be 
logically held to deny the existence of the other's 
Deity. Therefore ; that each has a scientific right 
to call the other an atheist ; and that, if he 
refrains, it is only on the ground of decency and 
good manners, which should restrain an honour- 
able man from employing even scientifically 
justifiable language, if custom has given it an 
abusive connotation. While one must agree with 
Hume, then, it is, nevertheless, to be wished that 
he had not set the bad example of calling poly- 
theists " superstitious atheists." It probably did 
not occur to him that, by a parity of reasoning, 
the Unitarians might justify the application of 
the same language to the Ultramontanes, and vice 
versa. But, to return from a digression which 
may not be wholly unprofitable, Hume proceeds 
to show in what manner polytheism incorporated 
physical and moral allegories, and naturally 
accepted hero-worship; and he sums up his 
views of the first stages of the evolution of 
theology as follows : — 

" These then are the general principles of polytheism, founded 
in human nature, and little or nothing dependent on caprice or 



188 HUME VIII 

accident. As the causes which bestow happiness or misery, are 
in general very little known and very uncertain, our anxious 
concern endeavours to attain a determinate idea of them ; and 
finds no better expedient than to represent them as intelligent, 
voluntary agents, like ourselves, only somewhat superior in 
power and wisdom. The limited influence of these agents, and 
their proximity to human weakness, introduce the various 
distribution and division of their authority, and thereby give 
rise to allegory. The same principles naturally deify mortals, 
superior in power, courage, or understanding, and produce hero- 
worship ; together with fabulous history and mythological 
tradition, in all its wild and unaccountable forms. And as an 
invisible spiritual intelligence is an object too refined for vulgar 
apprehension, men naturally affix it to some sensible representa- 
tion ; such as either the more conspicuous parts of nature, or 
the statues, images, and pictures, which a more refined age 
forms of its divinities." — (IV. p. 461.) 

How did the further stage of theology, mono- 
theism, arise out of polytheism ? Hume replies, 
certainly not by reasonings from first causes or 
aDy sort of fine-drawn logic : — 

" Even at this day, and in Europe, ask any of the vulgar why 
he believes in an Omnipotent Creator of the world, he will 
never mention the beauty of final causes, of which he is wholly 
ignorant : He will not hold out his hand and bid you contem- 
plate the suppleness and variety of joints in his fingers, their 
bending all one way, the counterpoise which they receive from 
the thumb, the softness and fleshy parts of the inside of the 
hand, with all the other circumstances which render that 
member fit for the use to which it was destined. To these he has 
been long accustomed ; and he beholds them with listlessness and 
unconcern. He will tell you of the sudden and unexpected death 
of such-a-one ; the fall and bruise of such another ; the excessive 
drought of this season ; the cold and rains of another. These he 
ascribes to the immediate operation of Providence : And such 



VIII THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 189 

events as, with good reasoners, are the chief difficulties in admit- 
ting a Supreme Intelligence, are with him the sole arguments for 
it. • • • 

( ' "We may conclude therefore, upon the whole, that since the 
vulgar, in nations which have embraced the doctrine of theism, 
still build it upon irrational and superstitious grounds, they are 
never led into that opinion by any process of argument, but by 
a certain train of thinking, more suitable to their genius and 
capacity. 

" It may readily happen, in an idolatrous nation, that though 
men admit the existence of several limited deities, yet there is 
some one God, whom, in a particular manner, they make the 
object of their worship and adoration. They may either sup- 
pose, that, in the distribution of power and territory among the 
Gods, their nation was subjected to the jurisdiction of that 
particular deity ; or, reducing heavenly objects to the model of 
things below, they may represent one god as the prince or 
supreme magistrate of the rest, who, though of the same nature, 
rules them with an authority like that which an earthly sover- 
eign exerts over his subjects and vassals. Whether this god, 
therefore, be considered as their peculiar patron, or as the 
general sovereign of heaven, his votaries will endeavour, by 
every art, to insinuate themselves into his favour ; and suppos- 
ing him to be pleased, like themselves, with praise and flattery, 
there is no eulogy or exaggeration which will be spared in their 
addresses to him. In proportion as men's fears or distresses 
become more urgent, they still invent new strains of adulation ; 
and even he who outdoes his predecessor in swelling the titles 
of his divinity, is sure to be outdone by his successor in newer 
and more pompous epithets of praise. Thus they proceed, till 
at last they arrive at infinity itself, beyond which there is no 
further progress ; And it is well if, in striving to get further, 
and to represent a magnificent simplicity, they run not into 
inexplicable mystery, and destroy the intelligent nature of their 
deity, on which alone any rational worship or adoration can be 
founded. While they confine themselves to the notion of a 
perfect being, the Creator of the world, they coincide, by chance, 
with the principles of reason and true philosophy ; though thoy 



190 HUME Vlll 

are guided to that notion, not by reason, of which they are in a 
great measure incapable, but by the adulation and fears of the 
most vulgar superstition." — (IV. pp. 463-6.) 

"Nay, if we should suppose, what never happens, that a 
popular religion were found, in which it was expressly declared, 
that nothing but morality could gain the divine favour ; if 
an order of priests were instituted to inculcate this opinion, 
in daily sermons, and with all the arts of persuasion ; yet so 
inveterate are the people's prejudices, that, for want of some 
other superstition they would make the very attendance on 
these sermons the essentials of religion, rather than place 
them in virtue and good morals. The sublime prologue of 
Zaleucus' laws inspired not the Locrians, so far as we can 
learn, with any sounder notions of the measures of acceptance 
with the deity, than were familiar to the other Greeks." — 
(IV. p. 505.) * 

It has been remarked that Hume's writings are 
singularly devoid of local colour ; of allusions to 
the scenes with which he was familiar, and to the 
people from whom he sprang. Yet, surely, the 
Lowlands of Scotland were more in his thoughts 
than the Zephyrean promontory, and the hard 
visage of John Knox peered from behind the 
mask of Zaleucus, when this passage left his pen. 
Nay, might not an acute German critic discern 
therein a reminiscence of that eminently Scottish 
institution, a " Holy Fair " ? where, as Hume's 
young contemporary sings : — 

ci * * * opens out his cauld harangues 
On practice and on morals ; 
An' aff the godly pour in thrangs 
To gie the jars and barrels 
A lift that day. 



vin THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 191 

"What signifies his barren shine 
Of moral powers and reason ? 
His English style and gesture fine 

Are a' clean out of season. 
Like Socrates or Antonine, 

Or some auld pagan heathen, 
The moral man he does define, 
But ne'er a word o' faith in 

That's right that day." 1 

1 Burns published the Holy Fair only ten years after Hume's 
death. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SOUL: THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 

Descartes taught that an absolute difference of 
kind separates matter, as that which possesses 
extension, from spirit, as that which thinks. 
They not only have no character in common, but 
it is inconceivable that they should have any. On 
the assumption, that the attributes of the two 
were wholly different, it appeared to be a 
necessary consequence that the hypothetical 
causes of these attributes — their respective 
substances — must be totally different. Notably, 
in the matter of divisibility, since that which has 
no extension cannot be divisible, it seemed that 
the chose pensante, the soul, must be an indivisible 
entity. 

Later philosophers, accepting this notion of the 
soul, were naturally much perplexed to under- 
stand how, if matter and spirit had nothing in 
common, they could act and react on one another. 
All the changes of matter being modes of motion, 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 193 

the difficulty of understanding how a moving 
extended material body was to affect a think- 
ing thing which had no dimension, was as great 
as that involved in solving the problem of how 
to hit a nominative case with a stick. Hence, 
the successors of Descartes either found them- 
selves obliged, with the Occasionalists, to call in 
the aid of the Deity, who was supposed to be 
a sort of go-between betwixt matter and spirit ; 
or they had recourse, with Leibnitz, to the doc- 
trine of pre-established harmony, which denied 
any influence of the body on the soul, or vice versd, 
and compared matter and spirit to two clocks so 
accurately regulated to keep time with one 
another, that the one struck whenever the other 
pointed to the hour; or, with Berkeley, they 
abolished the " substance " of matter altogether, 
as a superfluity, though they failed to see that the 
same arguments equally justified the abolition of 
soul as another superfluity, and the reduction of 
the universe to a series of events or phenomena ; 
or, finally, with Spinoza, to whom Berkeley makes 
a perilously close approach, they asserted the 
existence of only one substance, with two chief 
attributes, the one, thought, and the other, exten- 
sion. 

There remained only one possible position, which, 
had it been taken up earlier, might have saved an 
immensity of trouble ; and that was to affirm that 
we do not, and cannot, know anything about the 

156 



194 HUME 



IX 



" substance ' ' either of the thinking thing, or of 
the extended thing. And Hume's sound common 
sense led him to defend the thesis which Locke 
had already foreshadowed, with respect to the 
question of the substance of the soul. Hume 
enunciates two opinions. The first is that the 
question itself is unintelligible, and therefore 
cannot receive any answer ; the second is that 
the popular doctrine respecting the immateriality, 
simplicity, and indivisibility of a thinking sub- 
stance is a " true atheism, and will serve to justify 
all those sentiments for which Spinoza is so 
universally infamous." 

In support of the first opinion, Hume points out 
that it is impossible to attach any definite mean- 
ing to the word " substance " when employed for 
the hypothetical substratum of soul and matter. 
For if we define substance as that which may 
exist by itself, the definition does not distinguish 
the soul from perceptions. It is perfectly easy to 
conceive that states of consciousness are self-sub- 
sistent. And, if the substance of the soul is 
defined as that in which perceptions inhere, what 
is meant by the inherence ? Is such inherence 
conceivable ? If conceivable, what evidence is 
there of it ? And what is the use of a substratum 
to things which, for anything we know to the 
contrary, are capable of existing by themselves ? 

Moreover, it may be added, supposing the soul 
has a substance, how do we know that it is differ- 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 195 

ent from the substance, which, on like grounds, 
must be supposed to underlie the qualities of 
matter ? 

Again, if it be said that our personal identity 
requires the assumption of a substance which 
remains the same while the accidents of perception 
shift and change, the question arises what is 
meant by personal identity ? 

"For my part," says Hume, "when I enter most intimately 
into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular 
perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or 
hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any 
time without a perception, and never can observe anything 
but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for 
any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, 
and may be truly said not to exist. And were all my percep- 
tions removed by death, and I could neither think, nor feel, 
nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, 
I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is 
further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity. If any one, 
upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a 
different notion of himself I must confess I can reason no 
longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in 
the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in 
this particular. He may perhaps perceive something simple 
and continued which he calls himself though I am certain there 
is no such principle in me. 

" But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may 
venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing 
but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which suc- 
ceed one another with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in 
a perpetual flux and movement. . . . The mind is a kind of 
theatre, where several perceptions successively make their 
appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite 
variety of postures and situations. There is properly no 



196 HUME 



IX 



simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, whatever 
natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity 
and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead 
us. They are the successive perceptions only that constitute 
the mind ; nor have we the most distant notion of the place 
where these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which 
it is composed. 

" What then gives so great a propension to ascribe an 
identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose our- 
selves possessed of an invariable and uninterrupted existence 
through the whole course of our lives ? In order to answer 
this question, we must distinguish between personal identity 
as it regards our thought and imagination, and as it regards 
our passions, or the concern we take in ourselves. The first 
is our present subject ; and to explain it perfectly we must 
take the matter pretty deep, and account for that identity 
which we attribute to plants and animals ; there being a great 
analogy betwixt it and the identity of a self or person." — (I. 
pp. 321, 322.) 

Perfect identity is exhibited by an object 
which remains unchanged throughout a certain 
time; perfect diversity is seen in two or more 
objects which are separated by intervals of space 
and periods of time. But, in both these cases, 
there is no sharp line of demarcation between 
identity and diversity, and it is impossible to say 
when an object ceases to be one and becomes 

two. 

When a sea-anemone multiplies, by division, 
there is a time during which it is said to be one 
animal partially divided; but after a while, it 
becomes two animals adherent together, and the 
limit between these conditions is purely arbitrary. 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 197 

So in mineralogy, a crystal of a definite chemical 
composition may have its substance replaced, 
particle by particle, by another chemical com- 
pound. When does it lose its primitive identity 
and become a new thing ? 

Again, a plant or an animal, in the course of its 
existence, from the condition of an egg or seed to 
the end of life, remains the same neither in form, 
nor in structure, nor in the matter of which it is 
composed : every attribute it possesses is con- 
stantly changing, and yet we say that it is always 
one and the same individual. And if, in this case, 
we attribute identity without supposing an in- 
divisible immaterial something to underlie and con- 
dition that identity, why should we need the sup- 
position in the case of that succession of changeful 
phenomena we call the mind ? 

In fact, we ascribe identity to an individual 
plant or animal, simply because there has been no 
moment of time at which we could observe any 
division of it into parts separated by time or space. 
Every experience we have of it is as one thing 
and not as two ; and we sum up our experiences 
in the ascription of identity, although we know 
quite well that, strictly speaking, it has not been 
the same for any two moments. 

So with the mind. Our perceptions flow in 
even succession ; the impressions of the present 
moment are inextricably mixed up with the 
memories of yesterday and the expectations of 



198 HUME 



IX 



to-morrow, and all are connected by the links of 
cause and effect. 

" . . . . as the same individual republic may not only change 
its members, but also its laws and constitutions ; in like 
manner the same person may vary his character and disposi- 
tion, as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his 
identity. Whatever changes he endures, his several parts are 
still connected by the relation of causation. And, in this view, 
our identity with regard to the passions serves to corroborate 
that with regard to the imagination, by the making our 
distant perceptions influence each other, and by giving us a 
present concern for our past or future pains or pleasures. 

" As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and 
extent of this succession of perceptions, 'tis to be considered, 
upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. 
Had we no memory we never should have any notion of 
causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects 
which constitute our self or person. But having once acquired 
this notion of causation from the memory, we can extend the 
same chain of causes, and consequently the identity of our 
persons, beyond our memory, and can comprehend times, and 
circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot, but 
suppose in general to have existed. For how few of our past 
actions are there of which we have any memory ? Who can 
tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and actions on 
the first of January, 1715, the eleventh of March, 1719, and the 
third of August, 1733 ? Or will he affirm, because he has 
entirely forgot the incidents of those days, that the present self 
is not the same person with the self of that tim$, and by that 
means overturn all the most established notions of personal 
identity ? In this view, therefore, memory does not so much 
produce as discover personal identity, by showing us the relation 
of cause and effect among our different perceptions. 'Twill be 
incumbent on those who affirm that memory produces entirely 
our personal identity, to give a reason why we can thus extend 
our identity beyond our memory. 

" The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion which 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 199 

is of great importance in the present affair, viz. that all the 
nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can 
never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as 
grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity de- 
pends on the relations of ideas, and these relations produce 
identity by means of that easy transition they occasion. But 
as the relations, and the easiness of the transition may diminish 
by insensible degrees, we have no just standard by which we 
can decide any dispute concerning the time when they acquire 
or lose a title to the name of identity. All the disputes con- 
cerning the identity of connected objects are merely verbal, 
except so far as the relation of parts gives rise to some 
fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have already 
observed. 

"What I have said concerning the first origin and uncer- 
tainty of our notion of identity, as applied to the human mind, 
may be extended, with little or no variation, to that of sim- 
plicity. An object, whose different co-existent parts are bound 
together by a close relation, operates upon the imagination 
after much the same manner as one perfectly simple and un- 
divisible, and requires not a much greater stretch of thought in 
order to its conception. From this similarity of operation we 
attribute a simplicity to it, and feign a principle of union as the 
support of this simplicity, and the centre of all the different 
parts and qualities of the object/' — (I. pp. 331-3.) 

The final result of Hume's reasoning comes to 
this : As we use the name of body for the sum of 
the phenomena which make up our corporeal 
existence, so we employ the name of soul for the 
sum of the phenomena which constitute our 
mental existence ; and we have no more reason, in 
the latter case, than in the former, to suppose that 
there is anything beyond the phenomena which 
answers to the name. In the case of the soul, as 
in that of the body, the idea of substance is a 



200 EUME 



IX 



mere fiction of the imagination, This conclusion 
is nothing but a rigorous application of Berkeley's 
reasoning concerning matter to mind, and it is 
fully adopted by Kant. 1 

Having arrived at the conclusion that the 
conception of a soul, as a substantive thing, is 
a mere figment of the imagination; and that, 
whether it exists or not, we can by no possibility 
know anything about it, the inquiry as to the 
durability of the soul may seem superfluous. 

Nevertheless, there is still a sense in which, 
even under these conditions, such an inquiry is 
justifiable. Leaving aside the problem of the 
substance of the soul, and taking the word " soul * 
simply as a name for the series of mental 
phenomena which make up an individual mind ; 
it remains open to us to ask, whether that series 
commenced with, or before, the series of 
phenomena which constitute the corresponding 
individual body ; and whether it terminates with 
the end of the corporeal series, or goes on after 
the existence of the body has ended. And, in 
both cases, there arises the further question, 
whether the excess of duration of the mental 
series over that of the body, is finite or in- 
finite. 

1 " Our internal intuition shows no permanent existence, for 
the Ego is only the consciousness of my thinking." " There is 
no means whatever by which we can learn anything respecting 
the constitution of the soul, so far as regards the possibility of 
its separate existence." — Kritik von den Paralogismcii der rcincn 
Vermmft. 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 201 

Hume has discussed some of these questions in 
the remarkable essay " On the Immortality of the 
Soul," which was not published till after his death, 
and which seems long to have remained but little 
known. Nevertheless, indeed, possibly, for that 
reason, its influence has been manifested in un- 
expected quarters, and its main arguments have 
been adduced by archi episcopal and episcopal 
authority in evidence of the value of revelation. 
Dr. Whately, 1 sometime Archbishop of Dublin, 
paraphrases Hume, though he forgets to cite him ; 
and Bishop Courtenay's elaborate work, 2 dedicat- 
ed to the Archbishop, is a development of that 
prelate's version of Hume's essay. 

This little piece occupies only some ten pages, 
but it is not wonderful that it attracted an acute 
logician like Whately, for it is a model of clear 
and vigorous statement. The argument hardly 
admits of condensation, so that I must let Hume 
speak for himself :— 

"By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove the 
immortality of the soul : the arguments for it are commonly 
derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. 



1 Essays on Some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion, 
(Essay I. Revelation of a Future State), by Richard Whately, 
D.D., Archbishop of Dublin. Fifth Edition, revised, 1846. 

2 The Future States : their Evidences and Nature ; considered 
on Principles Physical, Moral, and Scriptural, with the Design 
of showing the Value of the Gospel Revelation, by the Right Rev. 
Reginald Courtenay, D.D., Lord Bishop of Kingston (Jamaica), 
1857 



202 HUME 



IX 



But in reality it is the gospel, and the gospel alone, that has 
brought life and immortality to light. 1 

" 1. Metaphysical topics suppose that the soul is im- 
material, and that 'tis impossible for thought to belong to a 
material substance. 2 But just metaphysics teach us that the 
notion of substance is wholly confused and imperfect ; and that 
we have no other idea of any substance, than as an aggregate of 
particular qualities inhering in an unknown something. Matter, 
therefore, and spirit, are at bottom equally unknown, and we 
cannot determine what qualities inhere in the one or in the 
other. 3 They likewise teach us that nothing can be decided 
& priori concerning any cause or effect ; and that experience, 
being the only source of our judgments of this nature, we 
cannot know from any other principle, whether matter, by its 
structure or arrangement, may not be the cause of thought. 
Abstract reasonings cannot decide any question of fact or 
existence. But admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed 
throughout the universe, like the ethereal fire of the Stoics, 
and to be the only inherent subject of thought, we have 
reason to conclude from analogy, that nature uses it after the 
manner she does the other substance, matter. She employs it 
as a kind of paste or clay ; modifies it into a variety of forms 



1 "Now that ' Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to 
li^ht through the Gospel/ and that in the most literal sense, 
which implies that the revelation of the doctrine is peculiar to 
His Gospel, seems to be at least the most obvious meaning of 
the Scriptures of the New Testament." — Whately, I.e. p. 27. 

2 Compare Of the Immateriality of the Soul, Section Y. of 
Part IV., Book I., of the Treatise, in which Hume concludes 
(I. p. 319) that, whether it be material or immaterial, " in both 
cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul 
are equally inconclusive ; and in both cases the moral argu- 
ments and those derived from the analogy of nature are equally 
strong and convincing." 

3 " The question again respecting the materiality of the soul 
is one which I am at a loss to understand clearly, till it shall 
have been clearly determined what matter is. We know nothing 
of it, any more than of mind, except its attributes." — Whately, 
I.e. p. 66. 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 203 

or existences ; dissolves after a time each modification, and 
from its substance erects a new form. As the same material 
substance may successively compose the bodies of all animals, 
the same spiritual substance may compose their minds : Their 
consciousness, or that system of thought which they formed 
during life, may be continually dissolved by death, and 
nothing interests them in the new modification. The most 
positive assertors of the mortality of the soul never denied 
the immortality of its substance ; and that an immaterial 
substance, as well as a material, may lose its memory or con- 
sciousness, appears in part from experience, if the soul be 
immaterial. Reasoning from the common course of nature, 
and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme 
Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy, 
what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, there- 
fore, if immortal, existed before our birth, and if the former 
existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter. Animals 
undoubtedly feel, think, love, hate, will, and even reason, 
though in a more imperfect manner than men : Are their souls 
also immaterial and immortal % " x 

Hume next proceeds to consider the moral argu- 
ments, and chiefly 

" . . . those derived from the justice of God, which is sup- 
posed to be further interested in the future punishment of the 
vicious and reward of the virtuous. " 

But if by the justice of God we mean the same 
attribute which we call justice in ourselves, then 
why should either reward or punishment be 

1 " Kone of those who contend for the natural immortality of 
the soul . . . have been able to extricate themselves from one 
difficulty, viz. that all their arguments apply, with exactly the 
same force, to prove an immortality, not only of brutes, but even 
of plants ; though in such a conclusion as this they are never 
willing to acquiesce. " — Whately, I.e. p. 67. 



204 HUME 



IX 



extended beyond this life ? 1 Our sole means of 
knowing anything is the reasoning faculty which 
God has given us ; and that reasoning faculty 
not only denies us any conception of a future 
state, but fails to furnish a single valid argument 
in favour of the belief that the mind will endure 
after the dissolution of the body. 

". . . If any purpose of nature be clear, we may affirm that 
the whole scope and intention of man's creation, so far as we 
can judge by natural reason, is limited to the present life. " 

To the argument that the powers of man are so 
much greater than the needs of this life require, 
that they suggest a future scene in which they 
can be employed, Hume replies : — 

" If the reason of man gives him great superiority above 
other animals, his necessities are proportionably multiplied 
upon him ; his whole time, his whole capacity, activity, courage, 
and passion, find sufficient employment in fencing against the 
miseries of bis present condition ; and frequently, nay, almost 
always, are too slender for the business assigned them. A pair of 
shoes, perhaps, was never yet wrought to the highest degree of per- 
fection that commodity is capable of attaining ; yet ii^is neces- 
sary, at least very useful, that there should be some politicians and 
moralists, even some geometers, poets and philosophers, among 

1 "Nor are we therefore authorised to infer & priori, inde- 
pendent of Revelation, a future state of retribution, from the 
irregularities prevailing in the present life, since that future 
state does not account fully for these irregularities. It may 
explain, indeed, how present evil may be conducive to future 
good, but not why the good could not be attained without the 
evil : it may reconcile with our notions of the divine justice the 
present prosperity of the wicked, but it does not account for the 
existence of the wicked." — Whately, I.e. pp. 69, 70. 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 205 

mankind. The powers of men are no more superior to their wants, 
considered merely in this life, than those of foxes and hares are, 
compared to their wants and to their period of existence. The 
inference from parity of reason is therefore obvious. " 

In short, Hume argues that, if the faculties 
with which we are endowed are unable to discover 
a future state, and if the most attentive consider- 
ation of their nature serves to show that they are 
adapted to this life and nothiug more, it is surely 
inconsistent with any conception of justice that 
we should be dealt with as if we had, all along, 
had a clear knowledge of the fact thus carefully 
concealed from us. What should we think of the 
justice of a father, who gave his son every reason 
to suppose that a trivial fault would only be 
visited by a box on the ear ; and then, years after- 
wards, put him on the rack for a week for the 
same fault ? 

Again, the suggestion arises, if God is the 
cause of all things, he is responsible for evil as 
well as for good ; and it appears utterly irrecon- 
cilable with our notions of justice that he should 
punish another for that which he has, in fact, done 
himself. Moreover, just punishment bears a 
proportion to the offence, while suffering which is 
infinite is ipso facto disproportionate to any finite 
deed. 

" Why then eternal punishment for the temporary offences 
of so frail a creature as man ? Can any one approve of Alex- 



206 HUME 



IX 



ander's rage, who intended to exterminate a whole nation 
because they had seized his favourite horse Buchephalus ? 

"Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the 
good and the bad ; but the greatest part of mankind float be- 
twixt vice and virtue. Were one to go round the world with the 
intention of giving a good supper to the righteous and a sound 
drubbing to the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed in 
his choice, and would find the merits and demerits of most men 
and women scarcely amount to the value of either." x 

One can but admire the broad humanity and 
the insight into the springs of action manifest in 
this passage. Comprendre est a moitiS pardonner. 
The more one knows of the real conditions which 
determine men's acts the less one finds either to 
praise or blame. For kindly David Hume, " the 
damnation of one man is an infinitely greater 
evil in the universe than the subversion of a 
thousand million of kingdoms." And he would 
have felt with his countryman Burns, that even 
" auld Nickie Ben " should " hae a chance." 

As against those who reason for the necessity of 
a future state, in order that the justice of the 
Deity may be satisfied, Hume's argumentation 
appears unanswerable. For if the justice of God 

1 " So reason also shows, that for man to expect to earn for 
himself by the practice of virtue, and claim, as his just right, 
an immortality of exalted happiness, is a most extravagant and 
groundless pretension."— Whately, I.e. p. 101. On the other 
hand, however, the Archbishop sees no unreasonableness in a 
man's earning for himself an immortality of intense unhappi- 
ness by the practice of vice. So that life is, naturally, a venture 
in which you may lose all, but can earn nothing. It may be 
thought somewhat hard upon mankind if they are pushed into 
a speculation of this sort, willy-nilly. 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 207 

resembles what we mean by justice, the bestowal 
of infinite happiness for finite well-doing and in- 
finite misery for finite ill-doing, it is in no sense 
just. And, if the justice of God does not resemble 
what we mean by justice, it is an abuse of 
language to employ the name of justice for the 
attribute described by it. But, as against those 
who choose to argue that there is nothing in what 
is known to us of the attributes of the Deity in- 
consistent with a future state of rewards and 
punishments, Hume's pleadings have no force. 
Bishop Butlers argument that, inasmuch as the 
visitation of our acts by rewards and punishments 
takes place in this life, rewards and punishments 
must be consistent with the attributes of the 
Deity, and therefore may go on as long as the 
mind endures, is unanswerable. Whatever exists 
is, by the hypothesis, existent by the will of God ; 
and, therefore, the pains and pleasures which 
exist now may go on existing for all eternity, 
either increasing, diminishing, or being endlessly 
varied in their intensity, as they are now. 

It is remarkable that Hume does not refer to 
the sentimental arguments for the immortality of 
the soul which are so much in vogue at the 
present day ; and which are based upon our desire 
for a longer conscious existence than that which 
nature appears to have allotted to us. Perhaps 
he did not think them worth notice. For indeed 
it is not a little strange, that our strong desire 



208 HUME 



IX 



that a certain occurrence should happen should 
be put forward as evidence that it will happen. 
If my intense desire to see the friend, from whom 
I have parted, does not bring him from the other 
side of the world, or take me thither; if the 
mother's agonised prayer that her child should 
live has not prevented him from dying ; experi- 
ence certainly affords no presumption that the 
strong desire to be alive after death, which we 
call the aspiration after immortality, is any more 
likely to be gratified. As Hume truly says, " All 
doctrines are to be suspected which are favoured 
by our passions ; ' and the doctrine, that we are 
immortal because we should extremely like to be 
so, contains the quintessence of suspiciousness. 

In respect of the existence and attributes of 
the soul, as of those of the Deity, then, logic 
is powerless and reason silent. At the most 
we can get no further than the conclusion of 
Kant : — 



" After we have satisfied ourselves of the vanity of all the 
ambitious attempts of reason to fly beyond the bounds of expe- 
rience, enough remains of practical value to content us. It is 
true that no one may boast that he knows that God and a future 
life exist ; for, if he possesses such knowledge, he is just the 
man for whom I have long been seeking. All knowledge 
(touching an object of mere reason) can be communicated, and 
therefore I might hope to see my own knowledge increased to 
this prodigious extent, by his instruction. No ; our conviction 
in these matters is not logical, but moral certainty ; and, inas- 
much as it rests upon subjective grounds, (of moral disposition) 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 209 

I must not even say : it is morally certain that there is a 
God, and so on ; but, I am morally certain, and so on. That 
is to say : the belief in a God and in another world is so inter- 
woven with my moral nature, that the former can no more 
vanish, than the latter can ever be torn from me. 

" The only point to be remarked here is that this act of faith 
of the intellect ( Vemtinftglaube) assumes the existence of moral 
dispositions. If we leave them aside, and suppose a mind 
quite indifferent to moral laws, the inquiry started by reason 
becomes merely a subject for speculation ; and [the conclusion 
attained] may then indeed be supported by strong arguments 
from analogy, but not by such as are competent to overcome 
persistent scepticism. 

" There is no one, however, who can fail to be interested in 
these questions. For, although he may be excluded from moral 
influences by the want of a good disposition, yet, even in this 
case, enough remains to lead him to fear a divine existence and a 
future state. To this end, no more is necessary than that he 
can at least have no certainty that there is no such being, and 
no future life ; for, to make this conclusion demonstratively 
certain, he must be able to prove the impossibility of both ; 
and this assuredly no rational man can undertake to do. This 
negative belief, indeed, cannot produce either morality or good 
dispositions, but can operate in an analogous fashion, by power- 
fully repressing the outbreak of evil tendencies. 

" But it will be said, is this all that Pure Reason can do when 
it gazes out beyond the bounds of experience ? Nothing more 
than two articles of faith ? Common sense could achieve as 
much without calling the philosophers to its counsels ! 

" I will not here speak of the service which philosophy has 
rendered to human reason by the laborious efforts of its criti- 
cism, granting that the outcome proves to be merely negative : 
about that matter something is to be said in the following 
section. But do you then ask, that the knowledge which 
interests all men shall transcend the common understanding 
and be discovered for you only by philosophers? The very 
thing which you make a reproach, is the best confirmation of 
the justice of the previous conclusions, since it shows that which 

157 



210 HUME 



IX 



could not, at first, have been anticipated ; namely, that in 
those matters which concern all men alike, nature is not guilty 
of distributing her gifts with partiality ; and that the highest 
philosophy, in dealing with the most important concerns of 
humanity, is able to take us no further than the guidance which 
she affords to the commonest understanding." 1 

In short, nothing can be proved or disproved 
respecting either the distinct existence, the 
substance, or the durability of the soul. So far, 
Kant is at one with Hume. But Kant adds, as 
you cannot disprove the immortality of the soul, 
and as the belief therein is very useful for moral 
purposes, you may assume it. To which, had 
Hume lived half a century later, he would prob- 
ably have replied, that, if morality has no better 
foundation than an assumption, it is not likely to 
bear much strain ; and, if it has a better found- 
ation, the assumption rather weakens than 
strengthens it. 

As has been already said, Hume is not content 
with denying that we know anything about the 
existence or the nature of the soul ; but he carries 
the war into the enemy's camp, and accuses those 
who affirm the immateriality, simplicity, and 
indivisibility of the thinking substance of atheism 
and Spinozism, which are assumed to be con- 
vertible terms. 

The method of attack is ingenious. Observa- 
tion appears to acquaint us with two different 
systems of beings, and both Spinoza and orthodox 

1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Ed. Hartenstein, p. 547. 



IX THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY 211 

philosophers agree, that the necessary substratum 
of each of these is a substance, in which the 
phenomena adhere, or of which they are attributes 
or modes. 

" I observe first the universe of objects or of body ; the sun, 
moon, and stars ; the earth, seas, plants, animals, men, ships, 
houses, and other productions either of art or of nature. Here 
Spinoza appears, and tells me that these are only modifications 
and that the subject in which they inhere is simple, uncom- 
pounded, and indivisible. After this I consider the other 
system of beings, viz. the universe of thought, or my impres- 
sions and ideas. Then I observe another sun, moon, and stars ; 
an earth and seas, covered and inhabited by plants and animals, 
towns, houses, mountains, rivers ; and, in short, everything 
I can discover or conceive in the first system. Upon my in- 
quiring concerning these, theologians present themselves, and 
Lell me that these also are modifications, and modifications of 
one simple, uncompounded, and indivisible substance. Imme- 
diately upon which I am deafened with the noise of a hundred 
voices, that treat the first hypothesis with detestation and scorn, 
and the second with applause and veneration. I turn my atten- 
tion to these hypotheses to see what may be the reason of so 
great a partiality ; and find that they have the same fault of 
being unintelligible, and that, as far as we can understand 
them, they are so much alike, that 'tis impossible to discover 
any absurdity in one, which is not common to both of them." 
— (I. p. 309.) 

For the manner in which Hume makes his 
case good, I must refer to the original. Plain 
people may rest satisfied that both hypotheses 
are unintelligible, without plunging any further 
among syllogisms, the premisses of which convey 
no meaning, while the conclusions carry no con- 
viction. 



CHAPTER X 

VOLITION: LIBEKTY AND NECESSITY 

In the opening paragraphs of the third part of 
the second book of the " Treatise/' Hume gives a 
description of the will. 

" Of all the immediate effects of pain and pleasure there is 
none more remarkable than the will; and though, properly- 
speaking, it be not comprehended among the passions, yet as 
the full understanding of its nature and properties is neces- 
sary to the explanation of them, we shall here make it the 
subject of our inquiry. I desire it may be observed, that, by 
the will, I mean nothing but the internal impression we feel, 
and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new 
motion of our body, or new perception of our mind. This im- 
pression, like the preceding ones of pride and humility, love 
and hatred, 'tis impossible to define, and needless to describe 
any further."— (II. p. 150.) 

This description of volition may be criticised on 
various grounds. More especially does it seem 
defective in restricting the term "will" to that 
feeling which arises when we act, or appear to 
act, as causes : for one may will to strike, with- 



X VOLITION : LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 213 

out striking ; or to think of something which we 
have forgotten. 

Every volition is a complex idea composed of 
two elements : the one is the idea of an action ; 
the other is a desire for the occurrence of that 
action. If I will to strike, I have an idea of a 
certain movement, and a desire that that move- 
ment should take place ; if I will to think of any 
subject, or, in other words, to attend to that sub- 
ject, I have an idea of the subject and a strong 
desire that it should remain present to my con- 
sciousness. And so far as I can discover, this 
combination of an idea of an object with an 
emotion, is everything that can be directly 
observed in an act of volition. So that Hume's 
definition may be amended thus : Volition is the 
impression which arises when the idea of a bodily 
or mental action is accompanied by the desire that 
the action should be accomplished. It differs 
from other desires simply in the fact, that we 
regard ourselves as possible causes of the action 
desired. 

Two questions arise, in connexion with the 
observation of the phenomenon of volition, as 
they arise out of the contemplation of all other 
natural phenomena. Firstly, has it a cause ; 
and, if so, what is its cause ? Secondly, is it 
followed by any effect, and if so, what effect does 
it produce ? 

Hume points out, that the nature of the phe- 



214 HUME X 

nomena we consider can have nothing to do with 
the origin of the conception that they are connected 
by the relation of cause and effect. For that 
relation is nothing but an order of succession, 
which, so far as our experience goes, is invariable ; 
and it is obvious that the nature of phenomena 
has nothing to do with their order. Whatever it 
is that leads us to seek for a cause for every event, 
in the case of the phenomena of the external 
world, compels us, with equal cogency, to seek it in 
that of the mind. 

The only meaning of the law of causation, in the 
physical world, is, that it generalises universal ex- 
perience of the order of that world ; and, if experi- 
ence shows a similar order to obtain among; states 
of consciousness, the law of causation will properly 
express that order. 

That such an order exists, however, is acknow- 
ledged by every sane man : 

"Our idea, therefore, of necessity and causation, arises 
entirely from the uniformity observable in the operations of 
nature, where similar objects are constantly conjoined together, 
and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from 
the appearance of the other. These two circumstances form the 
whole of that necessity which we ascribe to matter. Beyond 
the constant conjunction of similar objects and the consequent 
inference from one to the other, we have no notion of any 
necessity of connexion. 

"If it appear, therefore, what all mankind have evei 
allowed, without any doubt or hesitation, that these two cir- 
cumstances take place in the voluntary actions of men, and in 
the operations of mind, it must follow that all mankind have 



X volition: liberty and necessity 215 

ever agreed in the doctrine of necessity, and that they have 
hitherto disputed merely from not understanding each other." 
—(IV. p. 97.) 

But is this constant conjunction observable in 
human actions ? A student of history could give 
but one answer to this question : 

"Ambition, avarice, self love, vanity, friendship, generosity, 
public spirit : these passions, mixed in various degrees, and 
distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of 
the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enter- 
prizes which have ever been observed among mankind. "Would 
you know the sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the 
Greeks and Romans ? Study well the temper and actions of the 
French and English. You cannot be much mistaken in trans- 
ferring to the former most of the observations which you have 
made with regard to the latter. Mankind are so much the 
same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing 
new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to dis- 
cover the constant and universal principles of human nature, 
by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, 
and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our 
observations, and become acquainted with the regular springs of 
human action and behaviour. These records of wars, intrigues, 
factions, and revolutions are so many collections of experiments, 
by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes the principles 
of his science, in the same manner as the physician or natural 
philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of plants, 
minerals, and other external objects, by the experiments which 
he forms concerning them. Nor are the earth, air, water, and 
other elements examined by Aristotle and Hippocrates more like 
to those which at present lie under our observation, than the 
men described by Polybius and Tacitus are to those who now 
govern the world."— (IV. pp. 97-8.) 

Hume proceeds to point out that the value set 
upon experience in the conduct of affairs, whether 



216 HUME X 

of business or of politics, involves the acknowledg- 
ment that we base our expectation of what men 
will do, upon our observation of what they have 
done ; and, that we are as firmly convinced of the 
fixed order of thoughts as we are of that of things. 
And, if it be urged that human actions not un- 
frequently appear unaccountable and capricious, his 
reply is prompt : — 

"I grant it possible to find some actions which seem to have 
no regular connexion with any known motives, and are excep- 
tions to all the measures of conduct which have ever been 
established for the government of men. But if one could 
willingly know what judgment should be formed of such 
irregular and extraordinary actions, we may consider the 
sentiments commonly entertained with regard to those irregular 
events which appear in the course of nature, and the opera- 
tions of external objects. All courses are not conjoined to 
their usual effects with like uniformity. An artificer, who 
handles only dead matter, may be disappointed in his aim, as 
well as the politician who directs the conduct of sensible and 
intelligent agents. 

" The vulgar, who take things according to their first appear- 
ance, attribute the uncertainty of events to such an uncertainty 
in the causes as make the latter often fail of their usual 
influence, though they meet with no impediment to their opera- 
tion. But philosophers, observing that, almost in every part 
of nature, there is contained a vast variety of springs and 
principles, which are hid, by reason of their minuteness or 
remoteness, find that it is at least possible the contrariety of 
events may not proceed from any contingency in the cause, but 
from the secret operation of contrary causes. This possibility is 
converted into certainty by further observation, when they 
remark that, upon an exact scrutiny, a contrariety of effects 
always betrays a contrariety of causes, and proceeds from their 
mutual opposition. A peasant can give no better reason for 



X VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 217 

the stopping of any clock or watch, than to say that it does not 
commonly go right. But an artist easily perceives that the same 
force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influence 
on the wheels ; but fails of its usual effect, perhaps by reason 
of a grain of dust, which puts a stop to the whole movement. 
From the observation of several parallel instances, philosophers 
form a maxim, that the connexion between all causes and 
effects is equally necessary, and that its seeming uncertainty in 
some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary 
causes."— (I Y. pp. 101-2.) 

So with regard to human actions : — 

" The internal principles and motives may operate in a uni- 
form manner, notwithstanding these seeming irregularities ; in 
the same manner as the winds, rains, clouds, and other varia- 
tions of the weather are supposed to be governed by steady 
principles ; though not easily discoverable by human sagacity 
and inquiry."— (IY. p. 103.) 

Meteorology, as a science, was not in existence 
in Hume's time, or he would have left out the 
"supposed to be." In practice, again, what dif- 
ference does any one make between natural and 
moral evidence ? 

" A prisoner who has neither money nor interest, discovers 
the impossibility of his escape, as well, when he considers the 
obstinacy of the goaler, as the walls and bars with which he is 
surrounded ; and, in all attempts for his freedom, chooses 
rather to work upon the stone and iron of the one, than upon 
the inflexible nature of the other. The same prisoner, when 
conducted to the scaffold, foresees his death as certainly from 
the constancy and fidelity of his guards, as from the operation 
of the axe or wheel. His mind runs along a certain train of 
ideas : The refusal of the soldiers to consent to his escape ; the 
action of the executioner ; the separation of the head and body ; 



218 HUME 



X 



bleeding, convulsive motions, and death. Here is a connected 
chain of natural causes and voluntary actions ; but the mind 
feels no difference between them, in passing from one link 
to another, nor is less certain of the future event, than if it 
were connected with the objects presented to the memory or 
senses, by a train of causes cemented together by what we are 
pleased to call a physical necessity. The same experienced 
union has the same effect on the mind, whether the united 
objects be motives, volition, and actions ; or figure and motion. 
We may change the names of things, but their nature and 
their operation on the understanding never change." — (IV. pp. 
105-6.) 

But, if the necessary connexion of our acts 
with our ideas has always been acknowledged in 
practice, why the proclivity of mankind to deny it 
words ? 

" If we examine the operations of body, and the production 
of effects from their causes, we shall find that all our faculties 
can never carry us further in our knowledge of this relation, 
than barely to observe, that particular objects are constantly 
conjoined together, and that the mind is carried, by a customary 
transition, from the appearance of the one to the belief of the 
other. But though this conclusion concerning human ignor- 
ance be the result of the strictest scrutiny of this subject, men 
still entertain a strong propensity to believe, that they penetrate 
further into the province of nature, and perceive something 
like a necessary connexion between cause and effect. When, 
again, they turn their reflections towards the operations of their 
own minds, and feel no such connexion between the motive and 
the action ; they are thence apt to suppose, that there is a 
difference between the effects which result from material force, 
and those which arise from thought and intelligence. But, 
being once convinced, that we know nothing of causation of any 
kind, than merely the constant conjunction of objects, and the 
consequent inference of the mind from one to another, and find- 
ing that these two circumstances are universally allowed to have 



x volition: liberty and necessity 219 

place in voluntary actions ; we may be more easily led to own 
the same necessity common to all causes." — (IY. pp. 107, 8.) 

The last asylum of the hard-pressed advocate of 
the doctrine of uncaused volition is usually, that, 
argue as you like, he has a profound and ineradic- 
able consciousness of what he calls the freedom of 
his will. But Hume follows him even here, 
though only in a note, as if he thought the ex- 
tinction of so transparent a sophism hardly worthy 
of the dignity of his text. 

* c The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted 
for from another cause, viz. a false sensation, or seeming experi- 
ence, which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference in 
many of our actions. The necessity of any action, w T hether of 
matter, or of mind, is not, properly speaking, a quality in the 
agent, but in any thinking or intelligent being who may con- 
sider the action ; and it consists chiefly in the determination of 
his thoughts to infer the existence of that action from some 
preceding objects ; as liberty, when opposed to necessity, is 
nothing but the want of that determination, and a certain loose- 
ness or indifference which we feel in passing, or not passing, 
from the idea of any object to the idea of any succeeding one. 
Now we may observe that though, in reflecting on human 
actions, we seldom feel such looseness or indifference, but are 
commonly able to infer them with considerable certainty from 
their motives, and from the dispositions of the agent ; yet it 
frequently happens that in performing the actions themselves, 
we are sensible of something like it : And as all resembling 
objects are taken for each other, this has been employed as 
demonstrative and even intuitive proof of human liberty. We 
feel that our actions are subject to our will on most occasions ; 
and imagine we feel, that the will itself is subject to nothing, 
because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we feel 
that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself 



220 HUME x 

(or a Velleity as it is called in the schools), even on that side 
on which it did not settle. This image or faint notion, we 
persuade ourselves, could at that time have been completed into 
the thing itself ; because, should that be denied, we find upon a 
second trial that at present it can. We consider not that the 
fantastical desire of showing liberty is here the motive of our 
actions." — (IY. p. 110, note.) 

Moreover the moment the attempt is made to 
give a definite meaning to the words, the sup- 
posed opposition between free will and necessity 
turns out to be a mere verbal dispute. 

"For what is meant by liberty, when applied to voluntary 
actions ? We cannot surely mean, that actions have so little 
connexion with motive, inclinations, and circumstances, that 
one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the 
other, and that one affords no inference by which we can 
conclude the existence of the other. For these are plain and 
acknowledged matters of fact. By liberty, then, we can only 
mean a power of acting or not acting according to the determina- 
tions of the will ; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we 
may ; if we choose to move, we also may. Now this hypo- 
thetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one 
who is not a prisoner and in chains. Here then is no subject of 
dispute.''— (IV. p. 111.) 

Half the controversies about the freedom of the 
will would have had no existence, if this pithy 
paragraph had been well pondered by those who 
oppose the doctrine of necessity. For they rest 
upon the absurd presumption that the proposition, 
" I can do as I like/' is contradictory to the doctrine 
of necessity. The answer is ; nobody doubts that, 
at any rate within certain limits, you can do as 



X VOLITION: LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 221 

you like. But what determines your likings and 
dislikings ? Did you make your own constitution ? 
Is it your contrivance that one thing is pleasant 
and another is painful ? And even if it were, why 
did you prefer to make it after the one fashion 
rather than the other ? The passionate assertion 
of the consciousness of their freedom, which is the 
favourite refuge of the opponents of the doctrine 
of necessity, is mere futility, for nobody denies it. 
What they really have to do, if they would up- 
set the necessarian argument, is to prove that 
they are free to associate any emotion whatever 
with any idea whatever ; to like pain as much as 
pleasure; vice as much as virtue; in short, to 
prove, that, whatever may be the fixity of order of 
the universe of things, that of thought is given 
over to chance. 

In the second part of this remarkable essay, 
Hume considers the real, or supposed, immoral con- 
sequences of the doctrine of necessity, premising 
the weighty observation that 

" When any opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false ; 
but it ,is not certain that an opinion is false because it is of 
dangerous consequence." — (IV. p. 112.) 

And, therefore, that the attempt to refute an 
opinion by a picture of its dangerous consequences 
to religion and morality, is as illogical as it is 
reprehensible. 

It is said, in the first place, that necessity de- 



222 HUME X 

stroys responsibility ; that, as it is usually put, we 
have no right to praise or blame actions that can- 
not be helped. Hume's reply amounts to this, 
that the very idea of responsibility implies the 
belief in the necessary connexion of certain 
actions with certain states of the mind. A person 
is held responsible only for those acts which are 
preceded by a certain intention ; and, as we can- 
not see, or hear, or feel, an intention, we can only 
reason out its existence on the principle that like 
effects have like causes. 

If a man is found by the police busy with 
" jemmy" and dark lantern at a jeweller's shop 
door over night, the magistrate before whom he is 
brought the next morning, reasons from those 
effects to their causes in the fellow's burglarious 
ideas and volitions, with perfect confidence, and 
punishes him accordingly. And it is quite clear 
that such a proceeding would be grossly unjust, if 
the links of the logical process were other than 
necessarily connected together. The advocate 
who should attempt to get the man off on the 
plea that his client need not necessarily have had 
a felonious intent, would hardly waste his time 
more, if he tried to prove that the sum of all the 
angles of a triangle is not two right angles, but 
three. 

A man's moral responsibility for his acts has, in 
fact, nothing to do with the causation of these 
acts, but depends on the frame of mind which 



X VOLITION : LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 223 

accompanies them. Common language tells us 
this, when it uses " well disposed " as the equi- 
valent of "good/' and " evil-minded " as that of 
" wicked." If A does something which puts B in 
a violent passion, it is quite possible to admit that 
B's passion is the necessary consequence of A's 
act, and yet to believe that B's fury is morally 
wrong, or that he ought to control it. In fact, a 
calm bystander would reason with both on the 
assumption of moral necessity. He would say to 
A, " You were wrong in doing a thing which you 
knew (that is, of the necessity of which you were 
convinced) would irritate B." And he would say 
to B, " You are wrong to give way to passion, for 
you know its evil effects " — that is the necessary 
connection between yielding to passion and evil. 

So far, therefore, from necessity destroying 
moral responsibility, it is the foundation of all 
praise and blame ; and moral admiration reaches 
its climax in the ascription of necessary goodness 
to the Deity. 

To the statement of another consequence of the 
necessarian doctrine, that, if there be a God, he 
must be the cause of all evil as well as of all good, 
Hume gives no real reply- — probably because none 
is possible. But then, if this conclusion is dis- 
tinctly and unquestionably deducible from the 
doctrine of necessity, it is no less unquestionably 
a direct consequence of every known form of 
monotheism. If God is the cause of all things, 



224 HUME 



X 



he must be the cause of evil among the rest ; if 
he is omniscient, he must have the fore-knowledge 
of evil; if he is almighty, he must "possess the 
power of preventing, or of extinguishing evil. 
And to say that an all-knowing and all-powerful 
being is not responsible for what happens, because 
he only permits it, is, under its intellectual aspect, 
a piece of childish sophistry; while, as to the 
moral look of it, one has only to ask any decently 
honourable man, whether, under like circum- 
stances, he would try to get rid of his responsibili ty 
by such a plea. 

» ■ '■■■» — — - — 

Hume's "Inquiry" appeared in 1748. He does 
not refer to Anthony Collins' essay on Liberty, 
published thirty-three years before, in which the 
same question is treated to the same effect, with 
singular force and lucidity. It may be said, 
perhaps, that it is not wonderful that the two 
freethinkers should follow the same line of reason- 
ing ; but no such theory will account for the fact 
that in 1754, the famous Calvinistic divine, 
Jonathan Edwards, President of the College of 
New Jersey, produced, in the interests of the 
straitest orthodoxy, a demonstration of the neces- 
sarian thesis, which has never been equalled in 
power, and certainly has never been refuted. 

In the ninth section of the fourth part of 
Edwards's "Inquiry," he has to deal with the 
Arminian objection to the Calvinistic doctrine 
that " it makes God the author of sin " ; and it is 



X VOLITION : LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 225 

curious to watch the struggle between the theo- 
logical controversialist, striving to ward off an 
admission which he knows will be employed to 
damage his side, and the acute logician, conscious 
that, in some shape or other, the admission must 
be made. Beginning with a hi quoque, that the 
Arminian doctrine involves consequences as bad 
as the Calvinistic view, he proceeds to object to 
the term "author of sin/' though he ends by 
admitting that, in a certain sense, it is applicable ; 
he proves from Scripture, that God is the disposer 
and orderer of sin ; and then, by an elaborate false 
analogy with the darkness resulting from the 
absence of the sun, endeavours to suggest that he 
is only the author of it in a negative sense ; and, 
finally, he takes refuge in the conclusion that, 
though God is the orderer and disposer of those 
deeds which, considered in relation to their agents, 
are morally evil, yet inasmuch as His purpose has 
all along been infinitely good, they are not evil 
relatively to Him. 

And this, of course, may be perfectly true ; but 
if true, it is inconsistent with the attribute of 
Omnipotence. It is conceivable that there should 
be no evil in the world ; that which is conceivable 
is certainly possible ; if it were possible for evil to 
be non-existent, the maker of the world, who, 
though foreknowing the existence of evil in that 
world, did not prevent it, either did not really 
desire it should not exist, or could not prevent its 

158 



226 HUME x 

existence. It might be well for those who inveigh 
against the logical consequences of necessarianism 
to bethink them of the logical consequences of 
theism ; which are not only the same, when the 
attribute of Omniscience is ascribed to the Deity, 
but which bring out, from the existence of moral 
evil, a hopeless conflict between the attributes of 
Infinite Benevolence and Infinite Power, which, 
with no less assurance, are affirmed to appertain 
to the Divine Being. 

Kant's mode of dealing with the doctrine of 
necessity is very singular. That the phenomena 
of the mind follow fixed relations of cause and 
effect is, to him, as unquestionable as it is to 
Hume. But then there is the Ding an sich y 
the Noumenon, or Kantian equivalent for the 
substance of the soul. This, being out of the 
phenomenal world, is subject to none of the laws 
of phenomena, and is consequently as absolutely 
free, and as completely powerless, as a mathe- 
matical point, in vacuo, would be. Hence volition 
is uncaused, so far as it belongs to the noumenon ; 
but, necessary, so far as it takes effect in the 
phenomenal world. 

Since Kant is never weary of telling us that we 
know nothing whatever, and can know nothing, 
about the noumenon, except as the hypothetical 
subject of any number of negative predicates ; the 
information that it is free, in the sense of being 
out of reach of the law of causation, is about as 



X 



VOLITION : LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 227 



valuable as the assertion that it is neither gray, 
nor blue, nor square. For practical purposes, it 
must be admitted that the inward possession of 
such a noumenal libertine does not amount to 
much for people whose actual existence is made 
up of nothing but definitely regulated phenomena. 
When the good and evil angels fought for the 
dead body of Moses, its presence must have been 
of about the same value to either of the contend- 
ing parties, as that of Kant's noumenon, in the 
battle of impulses which rages in the breast of 
man. Metaphysicians, as a rule, are sadly deficient 
in the sense of humour ; or they would surely 
abstain from advancing propositions which, when 
stripped of the verbiage in which they are dis- 
guised, appear to the profane eye to be bare 
shams naked but not ashamed. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS 

In his autobiography, Hume writes : — 

" In the same year [1752] was published at London my 
' Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals ' ; which in my 
own opinion (who ought not to judge on that subject) is of all my 
writings, historical, philosophical, and literary, incomparably 
the best. It came unnoticed and unobserved into the world. " 

It may commonly be noticed that the relative 
value which an author ascribes to his own works 
rarely agrees with the estimate formed of them 
by his readers ; who criticise the products, with- 
out either the power, or the wish, to take into 
account the pains which they may have cost the 
producer. Moreover, the clear and dispassionate 
common sense of the " Inquiry Concerning the 
Principles of Morals ' may have tasted flat after 
the highly-seasoned " Inquiry Concerning the 
Human Unde standing." Whether the public 
like to be deceived, or not, may be open to ques- 
tion; but it is beyond a doubt that they love to 



XI THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS 229 

be shocked in a pleasant and mannerly way. 
Now Hume's speculations on moral questions are 
not so remote from those of respectable professors, 
like Hutcheson, or saintly prelates, such as Butler, 
as to present any striking novelty. And they 
support the cause of righteousness in a cool, 
reasonable, indeed slightly patronising fashion, 
eminently in harmony with the mind of the 
eighteenth century ; which admired virtue very 
much, if she would only avoid the rigour which 
the age called fanaticism, and the fervour which 
it called enthusiasm. 

Having applied the ordinary methods of scientific 
inquiry to the intellectual phenomena of the mind, 
it was natural that Hume should extend the same 
mode of investigation to its moral phenomena; 
and, in the true spirit of a natural philosopher, he 
commences by selecting a group of those states 
of consciousness with which every one's personal 
experience must have made him familiar : in the 
expectation that the discovery of the sources of 
moral approbation and disapprobation, in this 
comparatively easy case, may furnish the means 
of detecting them when they are more recondite. 

"We shall analyse that complication of mental qualities 
which form what, in common life, we call personal merit : 
Wc shall consider every attrihute of the mind, which renders a 
man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and 
contempt ; every habit or sentiment or faculty, which if ascribed 
to any person, implies either praise or blame, and may enter 
into any panegyric or satire of his character and manners. The 
quick sensibility, which, on this head, is so universal among 



230 HUME 



XI 



mankind, gives a philosopher sufficient assurance that he can 
never be considerably mistaken in framing the catalogue, or 
incurs any danger of misplacing the objects of his contem- 
plation : He needs only enter into his own breast for a moment, 
and consider whether he should or should not desire to 
have this or that quality assigned to him, and whether such 
or such an imputation would proceed from a friend or an enemy. 
The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in 
forming a judgment of this nature ; and as every tongue pos- 
sesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and 
another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idiom 
suffices, without any reasoning, to direct us in collecting an- 1 
arranging the estimable or blamable qualities of men. The 
only object of reasoning is to discover the circumstances on 
both sides, which are common to these qualities ; to observe 
that particular in which the estimable qualities agree on the one 
hand, and the blamable on the other, and thence to reach the 
foundation of ethics, and find their universal principles, from 
which all censure or approbation is ultimately derived. As 
this is a question of fact, not of abstract science, we can only 
expect success by following the experimental method, and 
deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular 
instances. The other scientifical method, where a general 
abstract principle is first established, and is afterwards branched 
out into a variety of inferences and conclusions, may be more 
perfect in itself, but suits less the imperfection of human nature, 
and is a common source of illusion and mistake, in this as well 
as in other subjects. Men are now cured of their passion for 
hypotheses and systems in natural philosophy, and will hearken 
to no arguments but those which are derived from experience. 
It is full time they should attempt a like reformation in all 
moral disquisitions ; and reject every system of ethics, however 
subtile or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observa- 
tion."— (IV. pp. 242-4.) 

No qualities give a man a greater claim to 
personal merit than benevolence and justice ; but 
if we inquire why benevolence deserves so much 



XI THE PKINCIPLES OF MORALS 231 

praise, the answer will certainly contain a large 
reference to the utility of that virtue to society; 
and as for justice, the very existence of the virtue 
implies that of society; public utility is its sole 
origin ; and the measure of its usefulness is also 
the standard of its merit. If every man possessed 
everything he wanted, and no one had the power 
to interfere with such possession ; or if no man 
desired that which could damage his fellow-man, 
justice would have no part to play in the universe. 
But as Hume observes : — 

" In the present disposition of the human heart, it would 
perhaps be difficult to find complete instances of such enlarged 
affections ; but still we may observe that the case of families 
approaches towards it ; and the stronger the mutual benevolence 
is among the individuals, the nearer it approaches, till all dis- 
tinction of property be in a great measure lost and confounded 
among them. Between married persons, the cement of friend- 
ship is by the laws supposed so strong, as to abolish all division 
of possessions, and has often, in reality, the force assigned to it. 1 
And it is observable that, during the ardour of new enthusiasms, 
when every principle is inflamed into extravagance, the com- 
munity of goods has frequently been attempted ; and nothing 
but experience of its inconveniences, from the returning or 
disguised selfishness of men, could make the imprudent fanatics 
adopt anew the ideas of justice and separate property. So true 
is it that this virtue derives its existence entirely from its 
necessary use to the intercourse and social state of mankind." 1 — 
(IV. p. 256.) 

" Were the human species so framed by nature as that each 

1 Family affection in the eighteenth century may have been 
stronger than in the nineteenth ; but Hume's bachelor inexpe- 
rience can surely alone explain his strange account of the sup- 
positions of the marriage law of that day, and their effects. The 
law certainly abolished all division of possessions, but it did so 
by making the husband sole proprietor. 



232 HUME 



XI 



individual possessed within himself every faculty requisite both 
for his own preservation and for the propagation of his kind : 
Were all society and intercourse cut off between man and man 
by the primary intention of the Supreme Creator : It seems 
evident that so solitary a being would be as much incapable of 
justice as of social discourse and conversation. Where mutual 
regard and forbearance serve to no manner of purpose, they 
would never direct the conduct of any reasonable man. The 
headlong course of the passions would be checked by no reflection 
on future consequences. And as each man is here supposed to 
love himself alone, and to depend only on himself and his own 
activity for safety and happiness, he would, on every occasion, 
to the utmost of his power, challenge the preference above every 
other being, to none of which he is bound by any ties, either of 
nature or of interest. 

* ' But suppose the conjunction of the sexes to be established 
in nature, a family immediately arises ; and particular rules 
being found requisite for its subsistence, these are immediately 
embraced, though without comprehending the rest of mankind 
within their prescriptions. Suppose that several families unite 
together in one society, wdiich is totally disjoined from all 
others, the rules which preserve peace and order enlarge them- 
selves to the utmost extent of that society ; but becoming then 
entirely useless, lose their force when carried one step further. 
But again, suppose that several distinct societies maintain a 
kind of intercourse for mutual convenience and advantage, the 
boundaries of justice still grow larger, in proportion to the 
largeness of men's views and the force of their mutual connexion. 
History, experience, reason, sufficiently instruct us in this natural 
progress of human sentiments, and in the gradual enlargement 
of our regard to justice in proportion as we become acquainted 
with the extensive utility of that virtue." — (IY. pp. 262 — 4.) 

The moral obligation of justice and the rights 
of property are by no means diminished by this 
exposure of the purely utilitarian basis on which 
they rest : — 

" For what stronger foundation can be desired or conceived 



XI THE PKINCIPLES OF MORALS 233 

for any duty, than to observe that human society, or even 
human nature, could not subsist without the establishment of 
it, and will still arrive at greater degrees of happiness and 
perfection, the more inviolable the regard is which is paid to 
that duty ? 

" The dilemma seems obvious : As justice evidently tends 
to promote public utility, and to support civil society, the 
sentiment of justice is either derived from our reflecting on 
that tendency, or, like hunger, thirst, and other appetites, re- 
sentment, love of life, attachment to offspring, and other 
passions, arises from a simple original instinct in the human 
heart, which nature has implanted for like salutary purposes. 
If the latter be the case, it follows that property, which is the 
object of justice, is also distinguished by a simple original 
instinct, and is not ascertained by any argument or reflection. 
But who is there that ever heard of such an instinct ? Or is 
this a subject in which new discoveries can be made ? We may 
as well expect to discover in the body new senses which had 
before escaped the observation of all mankind.' 7 — (IV. pp. 273- 
4.) 

The restriction of the object of justice to pro- 
perty, in this passage, is singular. Pleasure and 
pain can hardly be included under the term pro- 
perty, and yet justice surely deals largely with the 
withholding of the former, or the infliction of the 
latter, by men on one another. If a man bars 
another from a pleasure which he would otherwise 
enjoy, or actively hurts him without good reason, 
the latter is said to be injured as much as if his 
property had been interfered with. Here, indeed, 
it may be readily shown, that it is as much the 
interest of society that men should not interfere 
with one another's freedom, or mutually inflict 
positive or negative pain, as that they should not 



234 HUME XI 

meddle with one another's property ; and hence 
the obligation of justice in such matters may be 
deduced. But, if a man merely thinks ill of 
another, or feels maliciously towards him without 
due cause, he is properly said to be unjust. In 
this case it would be hard to prove that any injury 
is done to society by the evil thought ; but there 
is no question that it will be stigmatised as an 
injustice ; and the offender himself, in another 
frame of mind, is often ready enough to admit 
that he has failed to be just towards his neighbour. 
However, it may plausibly be said, that so slight a 
barrier lies between thought and speech, that any 
moral quality attached to the latter is easily 
transferred to the former ; and that, since open 
slander is obviously opposed to the interests of 
society, injustice of thought, which is silent 
slander, must become inextricably associated with 
the same blame. 

But, granting the utility to society of all kinds 
of benevolence and justice, why should the 
quality of those virtues involve the sense of moral 
obligation ? 

Hume answers this question in the fifth section 
entitled, " Why Utility Pleases." He repudiates 
the deduction of moral approbation from self-love, 
and utterly denies that we approve of benevolent 
or just actions because we think of the benefits 
which they are likely to confer indirectly on our- 
selves. The source of the approbation with which 
we view an act useful to society must be sought 



XI THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS 235 

elsewhere ; and, in fact, is to be found in that 
feeling which is called sympathy. 

"No man is absolutely indifferent to the happiness and 
misery of others. The first has a natural tendency to give 
pleasure, the second pain. This every one may find in himself. 
It is not probable that these principles can be resolved into 
principles more simple and universal, whatever attempts may 
have been made for that purpose." — (IY. p. 294, Note.) 

Other men's joys and sorrows are not spectacles 
at which we remain unmoved : — 

". . . The view of the former, whether in its causes or effects, 
like sunshine, or the prospect of well -cultivated plains (to carry 
our pretensions no higher) communicates a secret joy and 
satisfaction ; the appearance of the latter, like a lowering cloud 
or barren landscape, throws a melancholy damp over the imagin- 
ation. And this concession being once made, the difficulty is 
over ; and a natural unforced interpretation of the phenomena 
of human life will afterwards, we hope, prevail among all 
speculative inquirers." — (IY. p. 320.) 

The moral approbation, therefore, with w r hich 
we regard acts of justice or benevolence rests upon 
their utility to society, because the perception of 
that utility or, in other words, of the pleasure 
which they give to other men, arouses a feeling of 
sympathetic pleasure in ourselves. The feeling of 
obligation to be just, or of the duty of justice, 
arises out of that association of moral approbation 
or disapprobation with one's own actions, which is 
what we call conscience. To fail in justice, or in 
benevolence, is to be displeased with one's self. But 
happiness is impossible without inward self- 



236 HUME XI 

approval ; and, hence, every man who has any 
regard to his own happiness and welfare, will find 
his best reward in the practice of every moral 
duty. On this topic Hume expends much elo- 
quence. 

"But what philosophical truths can be more advantageous 
to society than these her(- delivered, which represent virtue in 
all her genuine and most engaging charms, and make us 
approach her with ease, familiarity, and affection ? The 
dismal dress falls off, with which many divines and some 
philosophers have covered her ; and nothing appears but gentle- 
ness, humanity, beneficence, affability ; nay, even at proper 
intervals, play, frolic, and gaiety. She talks not of useless 
austerities and rigours, suffering and self-denial. She declares 
that her sole purpose is to make her votaries, and all mankind, 
during every period of their existence, if possible, cheerful, 
and happy ; nor does she ever willingly part with any pleasure 
but in hopes of ample compensation in some other period of 
their lives. The sole trouble which she demands is that of 
just calculation, and a steady preference of the greater 
happiness. And if any austere pretenders approach her, 
enemies to joy and pleasure, she either rejects them as 
hypocrites and deceivers, or if she admit them in her train, 
they are ranked, however, among the least favoured of her 
votaries. 

"And, indeed, to drop all figurative expression, what hopes 
can we ever have of engaging mankind to a practice which 
we confess full of austerity and rigour ? Or what theory of 
morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, by 
a particular detail, that all the duties which it recommends are 
also the true interest of each individual ? The peculiar advan- 
tage of the foregoing system seems to be, that it furnishes 
proper mediums for that purpose." — (IV. p. 360.) 

In this paean to virtue, there is more of the 
dance measure than will sound appropriate in the 



XI THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS 237 

ears of most of the pilgrims who toil painfully, 
not without many a stumble and many a bruise, 
along the rough and steep roads which lead to the 
higher life. 

Virtue is undoubtedly beneficent ; but the man 
is to be envied to whom her ways seem in anywise 
playful. And though she may not talk much 
about suffering and self-denial, her silence on th at 
topic may be accounted for on the principle ga va 
sans dire. The calculation of the greatest happi- 
ness is not performed quite so easily as a rule 01 
three sum ; while, in the hour of temptation, the 
question will crop up, whether, as something has 
to be sacrificed, a bird in the hand is not worth 
two in the bush ; whether it may not be as well to 
give up the problematical greater happiness in the 
future, for a certain great happiness in the present, 
and 

" Buy the merry madness of one hour 
With the long irksomeness of following time." 1 

If mankind cannot be engaged in practices " full 
of austerity and rigour," by the love of righteous- 
ness and the fear of evil, without seeking for 
other compensation than that which flows from 
the gratification of such love and the consciousness 
of escape from debasement, they are in a bad case. 
For they will assuredly find that virtue presents 
no very close likeness to the sportive leader of the 
joyous hours in Hume's rosy picture ; but that she 

1 Ben Jonson's Cynthia s Revels, act i. 



238 HUME 



XI 



is an awful Goddess, whose ministers are the 
Furies, and whose highest reward is peace. 

It is not improbable that Hume would have 
qualified all this as enthusiasm or fanaticism, or 
both ; but he virtually admits it : — 

" Now, as virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own 
account, without fee or reward, merely for the immediate satis- 
faction which it conveys, it is requisite that there should be some 
sentiment which it touches ; some internal taste or feeling, or 
whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good 
and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other. 

"Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of 
taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge 
of truth and falsehood : The latter gives the sentiment of 
beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects 
as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution : 
The other has a productive faculty, and gilding and staining all 
natural objects with the colours borrowed from internal senti- 
ment, raises in a manner a new creation. Reason being cool 
and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the 
impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the 
means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery. Taste, as it 
gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or 
misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring 
or impulse to desire and volition. From circumstances 
and relations known or supposed, the former leads us to 
the discovery of the concealed and unknown. After all 
circumstances and relations are laid before us, the latter 
makes us feel from the whole a new sentiment of blame or 
approbation. The standard of the one, being founded on the 
nature of things, is external and inflexible, even by the will of 
the Supreme Being : The standard of the other, arising from 
the internal frame and constitution of animals, is ultimately 
derived from the Supreme Will, which bestowed on each being 
its peculiar nature, and arranged the several classes and orders 
of existence."— (IV. pp. 376—7.) 

Hume has not discussed the theological theory 



XI THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS 239 

of the obligations of morality, but it is obviously 
in accordance with his view of the nature of those 
obligations. Under its theological aspect, mo- 
rality is obedience to the will of God ; and the 
ground for such obedience is two-fold : either we 
ought to obey God because He will punish us if 
we disobey Him, which is an argument based on 
the utility of obedience ; or our obedience ought 
to flow from our love towards God, which is an 
argument based on pure feeling and for which no 
reason can be given. For, if any man should say 
that he takes no pleasure in the contemplation of 
the ideal of perfect holiness, or, in other words, 
that he does not love God, the attempt to argue 
him into acquiring that pleasure would be as 
hopeless as the endeavour to persuade Peter Bell 
of the " witchery of the soft blue sky." 

In whichever way we look at the matter, morality 
is based on feeling, not on reason ; though reason 
alone is competent to trace out the effects of our 
actions and thereby dictate conduct. Justice is 
founded on the love of one's neighbour; and 
goodness is a kind of beauty. The moral law, like 
the laws cf physical nature, rests in the long run 
upon instinctive intuitions, and is neither more nor 
less " innate ' and " necessary ' than they are. 
Some people cannot by any means be got to 
understand the first book of Euclid ; but the 
truths of mathematics are no less necessary and 
binding on the great mass of mankind. Some 
there are who cannot feel the difference between 



240 HUME 



XI 



the " Sonata Appassionata " and " Cherry Ripe ; " 
or between a grave-stone-cutters cherub and the 
Apollo Belvidere ; but the canons of art are none 
the less acknowledged. While some there may 
be, who, devoid of sympathy, are incapable of a 
sense of duty ; but neither does their existence 
affect the foundations of morality. Such patho- 
logical deviations from true manhood are merely 
the halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of 
consciousness ; and the anatomist of the mind 
leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body 
would ignore abnormal specimens. 

And as there are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons 
and Raffaelles, in whom the innate faculty for 
science or art seems to need but a touch to spring 
into full vigour, and through whom the human 
race obtains new possibilities of knowledge and 
new conceptions of beauty : so there have been 
men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of 
duty and visions of moral perfection, which 
ordinary mankind could never have attained : 
though, happily for them, they can feel the beauty 
of a vision, which lay beyond the reach of their 
dull imaginations, and count life well spent in 
shaping some faint image of it in the actual world. 



HELPS TO THE STUDY 



OF 



BERKELEY 



159 



BISHOP BERKELEY ON THE META- 
PHYSICS OF SENSATION 1 

[1871] 

Professor Fraser has earned the thanks of all 
students of philosophy for the conscientious 
labour which he has bestowed upon his new 
edition of the works of Berkeley ; in which, for 
the first time, we find collected together every 
thought which can be traced to the subtle and 
penetrating mind of the famous Bishop of Cloyne ; 
while the "Life and Letters' will rejoice those 
who care less for the idealist and the prophet of 
tar- water, than for the man who stands out as one 
of the noblest and purest figures of his time : 
that Berkeley from whom the jealousy of Pope 

1 The Works of George Berkeley, D. D. , formerly Bishop of 
Cloyne, including many of his Works hitherto unpublished, with 
Preface, Annotations, his Lift and Letters, and an Account of 
his Philosophy. By A. C. Fraser. Four vols. Oxford : 
Clarendon Press, 1871. 



244 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

did not withhold a single one of all " the virtues 
under heaven ; " nor the cynicism of Swift, the 
dignity of " one of the first men of the kingdom 
for learning and virtue ; ' the man whom the 
pious Atterbury could compare to nothing less 
than an angel; whose personal influence and 
eloquence filled the Scriblerus Club and the 
House of Commons with enthusiasm for the 
evangelization of the North American Indians ; 
and even led Sir Robert Walpole to assent to the 
appropriation of public money to a scheme which 
was neither business nor bribery. 1 

Hardly any epoch in the intellectual history of 
England is more remarkable in itself, or possesses 
a greater interest for us in these latter days, than 
that which coincides broadly with the conclusion 
of the seventeenth and the opening of the 
eighteenth century. The political fermentation of 
the preceding age was gradually working itself 
out ; domestic peace gave men time to think ; and 
the toleration won by the party of which. Locke 
was the spokesman, permitted a freedom of speech 
and of writing such as has rarely been exceeded 
in later times. Fostered by these circumstances, 
the great faculty for physical and metaphysical 



1 In justice to Sir Robert, however, it is proper to remark 
that he declared afterwards, that he gave his assent to Berkeley's 
scheme for the Bermuda University only because he thought the 
House of Commons was sure to throw it out. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 245 

inquiry, with which the people of our race are 
naturally endowed, developed itself vigorously ; 
and at least two of its products have had a 
profound and a permanent influence upon the 
subsequent course of thought in the world. The 
one of these was English Freethinking ; the 
other, the Theory of Gravitation. 

Looking back to the origin of the intellectual 
impulses of which these were the results, we are 
led to Herbert, to Hobbes, to Bacon ; and to one 
who stands in advance of all these, as the most 
typical man of his time — Descartes. It is the 
Cartesian doubt — the maxim that assent may 
properly be given to no propositions but such as 
are perfectly clear and distinct — which, becoming 
incarnate, so to speak, in the Englishmen, Anthony 
Collins, Toland, Tinclal, Woolston, and in the 
wonderful Frenchman, Pierre Bayle, reached its 
final term in Hume, And, on the other hand, 
although the theory of Gravitation set aside the 
Cartesian vortices — yet the spirit of the "Prin- 
cipes de Philosophie ' attained its apotheosis 
when Newton demonstrated all the host of heaven 
to be but the elements of a vast mechanism, 
regulated by the same laws as those which ex- 
press the falling of a stone to the ground. There 
is a passage in the preface to the first edition 
of the "Principia" which shows that Newton 
was penetrated, as completely as Descartes, 
with the belief that all the phenomena of 



246 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

nature 1 are expressible in terms of matter and 
motion. 

" Would that the rest of the phenomena of 
nature could be deduced by a like kind of reason- 
ing from mechanical principles. For many cir- 
cumstances lead me to suspect that all these 
phenomena may depend upon certain forces, in 
virtue of which the particles of bodies, by causes 
not yet known, are either mutually impelled 
against one another and cohere into regular 
figures, or repel and recede from one another; 
which forces being unknown, philosophers have as 
yet explored nature in vain. But I hope that, 
either by this method of philosophizing, or by 
some other and better, the principles here laid 
down may throw some light upon the matter." 2 

1 So far as Descartes is concerned the phenomena of conscious- 
ness are excluded from this category. According to his view, 
animals and man, in so far as he resembles them, are mechanisms. 
The soul, which alone feels and thinks, is extra-natural — a some- 
thing divinely created and added to the anthropoid mechanism. 
He thus provided their favourite resting-place for the supra - 
naturalistic evolutionists of our day. 

Descartes' denial of sensation to the lower animals is a neces- 
sary consequence of his hypothesis concerning the nature and 
origin of the soul. He was too logical a thinker not to be 
aware that, if he admitted even the most elementary form of 
consciousness to be a product or a necessary concomitant, of 
material mechanism, the assumption of the existence of a 
thinking substance, apart from matter, would become super- 
fluous.— [1894]. 

2 "Utinam csetera naturae phenomena ex principiis mechani- 
cis, eodem argumentandi genere, derivare licet. Nam multa 
me movent, ut nonnihil suspicer ea omnia exviribus quibusdam 
pendere posse, quibus corporum particular, per causas noiidum 
cognitas, vel in se mutuo impelluntur et secundum figuras 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 247 

But the doctrine that all the phenomena of 
nature are resolvable into mechanism is what 
people have agreed to call " materialism ; " and 
when Locke and Collins maintained that matter 
may possibly be able to think, and Newton 
himself could compare infinite space to the sen- 
sorium of the Deity, it was not wonderful that 
the English philosophers should be attacked as 
they were by Leibnitz in the famous letter to the 
Princess of Wales, which gave rise to his corre- 
spondence with Clarke. 1 

" 1. Natural religion itself seems to decay [in 
England] very much. Many will have human 
souls to be material ; others make God Himself a 
corporeal Being. 

" 2. Mr. Locke and his followers are uncertain, 
at least, whether the soul be not material and 
naturally perishable. 

" 3. Sir Isaac Newton says that space is an 
organ which God makes use of to perceive things 
by. But if God stands in need of any organ to 
perceive things by, it will follow that they do not 
depend altogether upon Him, nor were produced 
by Him. 



regulares cohserent vel ab invicem fugantur et recedunt ; quibus 
viribus ignotis, Philosophi hactexms Naturarn frustra tentarunt. 
Spero autera qudd vel huic philosophandi modo, vel veriori, 
alicui, principia hie posita lucem aliquam prsebebunt." — Preface 
to First Edition of Principia, May 8, 1686. 

1 Collection of Pavers which passed between the learned late 
Mr, Leibnitz and Dr. Clarke. — 1717. 



248 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

" 4. Sir Isaac Newton and his followers have 
also a very odd opinion concerning the work of 
God. According to their doctrine, God Almighty 
wants to wind up His watch from time to time ; 
otherwise it would cease to move. 1 He had not, 
it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual 
motion. Nay, the machine of God's making is so 
imperfect, according to these gentlemen, that He 
is obliged to clean it now and then by an extra- 
ordinary concourse, and even to mend it as a 
clockmaker mends his work." 

It is beside the mark, at present, to inquire 
how far Leibnitz paints a true picture, and how 
far he is guilty of a spiteful caricature of New- 
ton's views in these passages ; and whether the 
beliefs which Locke is known to have entertained 
are consistent with the conclusions which may 
logically be drawn from some parts of his works. 
It is undeniable that English philosophy in Leib- 
nitz's time had the general character which he 
ascribes to it. The phenomena of nature were 
held to be resolvable into the attractions and the 
repulsions of particles of matter ; all knowledge 
was attained through the senses ; the mind ante- 
cedent to experience was a tabula rasa. In other 
words, at the commencement of the eighteenth 
century, the character of speculative thought in 

1 Goethe seems to have had this saying of Leibnitz in his 
mind when he wrote his famous lines — 

" Was war' ein Gott der nur von anssen stiesse 
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse." 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 249 

England was essentially sceptical, critical, and 
materialistic. Why such " materialism " 1 should 
be more inconsistent with the existence of a 
Deity, the freedom of the will, or the immor- 
tality of the soul, or with any actual or possible 
system of theology, than (t idealism," I must 
declare myself at a loss to divine. But, in the 
year 1700, all the world appears to have been 
agreed, Tertullian notwithstanding, that material- 
ism necessarily leads to very dreadful conse- 
quences. And it was thought that it conduced to 
the interests of religion and morality to attack the 
materialists with all the weapons that came to 
hand. Perhaps the most interesting controversy 
which arose out of these questions is the wonder- 
ful triangular duel between Dodwell, Clarke, and 
Anthony Collins, concerning the materiality of 
the soul, and — what all the disputants considered 
to be the necessary consequence of its material- 
ity — its natural mortality. I do not think that 
any one can read the letters which passed between 
Clarke and Collins, without admitting that 
Collins, who writes with wonderful power and 
closeness of reasoning, has by far the best of the 
argument, so far as the possible materiality of the 
soul goes ; and that, in this battle, the Goliath of 
Freethinking overcame the champion of what was 
considered Orthodoxy. 

In Dublin, all this while, there was a little 

1 See Note A appended to tliis Essay. 



250 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

David practising his youthful strength upon the 
intellectual lions and bears of Trinity College. 
This was George Berkeley, who was destined to 
give the same kind of development to the 
idealistic side of Descartes' philosophy, that the 
Freethinkers had given to its sceptical side, and 
the Newtonians to its mechanical side. 

Berkeley faced the problem boldly. He said 
to the materialists : " You tell me that all the 
phenomena of nature are resolvable into matter 
and its affections. I assent to your statement, 
and now I put to you the further question, ' What 
is matter ? ' In answering this question you shall 
be bound by your own conditions ; and I demand, 
in the terms of the Cartesian axiom, that in turn 
you give your assent only to such conclusions as 
are perfectly clear and obvious." 

It is this great argument which is worked out 
in the " Treatise concerning the Principles ot 
Human Knowledge," and in those " Dialogues 
between Hylas and Philonous," which rank among 
the most exquisite examples of English style, as 
well as among the subtlest of metaphysical 
writings ; and the final conclusion of which 
is summed up in a passage remarkable alike 
for literary beauty, and for calm audacity of 
statement. 

"Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind 
that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I tako 
this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and 



THE METAPHYSICS OK SKNSATION 2f> 1 

furniture of (,1m earth - in a word, all Mioho bodies vvliicli com- 
pose the mighty frame of tlm world — Inivo not any snbslanco 
without a mind ; that their being in to l>(5 perceived or known ; 
that consequently, .so long as tlmy arc not actually perceived hy 
um, or do not exist in my mind or that of any oilier created 
spirit, they must cither have no oxiHtenco at all or else subsist 
in the mind of some eternal spirit ; it being perfectly unintel- 
ligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to 
attribute to any single part of them an existence independent <>l 
a spirit." ' 

Doubtless this passage sounds like; the nemo of 
metaphysical paradox, and wo all know that 
"coxcombs vanquished Berkeley with a u; i i n ; 
while common-sense folk refuted him by stamp- 
ing on the ground, or some such other irrelevant 
proceeding. But the key to all philosophy lies in 
the clear apprehension of .Berkeley's problem 
which is neither more nor loss than one of the 
shapes of tin; greatest of all questions, " What are 
the limits of our faculties?' And it is worth 
any amount of trouble to comprehend the exact 
nature of the argument by which Berkeley arrived 
at his results, and to know by one's own know- 
ledge the great truth which lie discovered — thai 
the honest and rigorous following up of the argu- 
ment which leads us to "materialism," inevitably 
carries us beyond it. 

Suppose that 1 accidentally prick my linger 
with a pin. I immediately become aware of a 

1 Treatise concerning the Principles <>/ Human Knowledge^ 
Tart I. § (>. 



252 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

condition of my consciousness — a feeling which 
I term pain. I have no doubt whatever that the 
feeling is in myself alone; and if any one were 
to say that the pain I feel is something which 
inheres in the needle, as one of the qualities of 
the substance of the needle, we should all laugh 
at the absurdity of the phraseology. In fact, it is 
utterly impossible to conceive pain except as a 
state of consciousness. 

Hence, so far as pain is concerned, it is suffi- 
ciently obvious that Berkeley's phraseology is 
strictly applicable to our power of conceiving its 
existence — "its being is to be perceived or 
known," and " so long as it is not actually per- 
ceived by me, or does not exist in my mind, or 
that of any other created spirit, it must either 
have no existence at all, or else subsist in the 
mind of some eternal spirit." 

So much for pain. Now let us consider an 
ordinary sensation. Let the point of the pin be 
gently rested upon the skin, and I become aware 
of a feeling, or condition of consciousness, quite 
different from the former — the sensation of what 
I call " touch." Nevertheless this touch is plainly 
just as much in myself as the pain was. I cannot 
for a moment conceive this something which I 
call touch as existing apart from myself, or a 
being capable of the same feelings as myself. 
And the same reasoning applies to all the other 
simple sensations. A moment's reflection is suffi- 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 253 

cient to convince one that the smell, and the 
taste, and the yellowness, of -which we become 
aware when an orange is smelt, tasted, and seen, 
are as completely states of our consciousness as is 
the pain which arises if the orange happens to be 
too sour. Nor is it less clear that every sound is 
a state of the consciousness of him who hears it. 
If the universe contained only blind and deaf 
beings, it is impossible for us to imagine but that 
darkness and silence should reign everywhere. 

It is undoubtedly true, then, of all the simple 
sensations that, as Berkeley says, their "esse is 
percipi" — their being is to be " perceived or 
known." But that which perceives, or knows, is 
termed mind or spirit ; and therefore the know- 
ledge which the senses give us is, after all, a know- 
ledge of spiritual phenomena. 

All this was explicitly or implicitly admitted, 
and, indeed, insisted upon, by Berkeley's contem- 
poraries, and by no one more strongly than by 
Locke, who terms smells, • tastes, colours, sounds, 
and the like, " secondary qualities," and observes, 
with respect to these " secondary qualities," that 
"whatever reality we by mistake attribute to 
them [they] are in truth nothing in the objects 
themselves." 

And again : " Flame is denominated hot and 
light ; snow, white and cold ; and manna, white 
and sweet, from the ideas they produce in us ; 
which qualities are commonly thought to be the 



254 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

same in these bodies ; tliat those ideas are in us, 
the one the perfect resemblance of the other as 
they are in a mirror ; and it would by most men 
be judged very extravagant if one should say 
otherwise. And yet he that will consider that 
the same fire that at one distance produces in us 
the sensation of warmth, does at a nearer ap- 
proach produce in us the far different sensation of 
pain, ought to bethink himself what reason he 
lias to say that his idea of warmth, which was 
produced in him by the fire, is actually in the 
fire ; and his idea of pain which the same fire 
produced in him in the same way, is not in the 
fire. Why are whiteness and coldness in snow, 
and pain not, when it produces the one and the 
other idea in us ; and can do neither but by the 
bulk, figure, number, and motion of its solid 
parts ? " * 

Thus far then materialists and idealists are 
agreed. Locke and Berkeley, and all logical 
tl linkers who have succeeded them, are of one 
mind about secondary qualities — their being is to 
be perceived or known — their materiality is, in 
strictness, a spirituality. 

But Locke draws a great distinction between 
the secondary qualities of matter, and certain 
others which he terms " primary qualities." These 
are extension, figure, solidity, motion and rest, 
and number ; and he is as clear that these 

1 Locke, Human Understanding, Book II. chap. viii. §§14, 15. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 255 

primary qualities exist independently of the mind, 
as he is that the secondary qualities have no such 
existence. 

"The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the 
parts of fire and snow are really in them, whether any one's 
senses perceive them or not, and therefore they may be called 
real qualities, because they really exist in those bodies ; but 
light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more really in them, 
than sickness, or pain, is in manna. Take away the sensation 
of them ; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear 
sounds ; let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell ; and all 
colours, tastes, odours and sounds, as they are such particular 
ideas, vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes, i.e. 
bulk, figure, and motion of parts. 

"18. A piece of manna of sensible bulk is able to produce in 
us the idea of a round or square figure ; and, by being removed 
from one place to another, the idea of motion. This idea of 
motion represents it as it really is in the manna moving ; a 
circle and square are the same, whether in idea or existence, in 
the mind or in the manna ; and thus both motion and figure 
are really in the manna, whether we take notice of them or no : 
this everybody is ready to agree to. " 

So far as primary qualities are concerned, then, 
Locke is as thoroughgoing a realist as St. Anselm. 
In Berkeley, on the other hand, we have as com- 
plete a representative of the nominalists and 
conceptualists — an intellectual descendant of 
Roscellinus and of Abelard. And by a curious 
irony of fate, it is the nominalist who is, this 
time, the champion of orthodoxy, and the realist 
that of heresy. 

Once more let us try to " work out Berkeley's 

1 See note B. 



256 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

principles for ourselves, and inquire what founda- 
tion there is for the assertion that extension, form, 
solidity, and the other " primary qualities," have 
an existence apart from mind. And for this pur- 
pose let us recur to our experiment with the pin. 
* It has been seen that when the finger is pricked 
with a pin, a state of consciousness arises which 
we call pain ; and it is admitted that this pain is 
not a something which inheres in the pin, but a 
something which exists only in the mind, and has 
no similitude elsewhere. 

But a little attention will show that this state 
of consciousness is accompanied by another, which 
can by no effort be got rid of. I not only have 
the feeling, but the feeling is localized. I am just 
as certain that the pain is in my finger, as I am 
that I have it at all. Nor will any effort of the 
imagination enable me to believe that the pain is 
not in my finger. 

And yet nothing is more certain than that it is 
not, and cannot be, in the spot in which I feel it, 
nor within a couple of feet of that spot. For 
the skin of the finger is connected by a bundle of 
fine nervous fibres, which run up the whole length 
of the arm, to the spinal marrow, which sets them 
in communication with the brain, and we know 
that the feeling of pain caused by the prick of a 
pin is dependent on the integrity of those fibres. 
After they have been cut through close to the 
spinal cord, no pain will be felt, whatever injury 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 257 

is done to the finger; and if the ends which re- 
main in connection with the cord be pricked, the 
pain which arises will appear to have its seat in 
the finger just as distinctly as before. Nay, if the 
whole arm be cut off, the pain which arises from 
pricking the nerve stump will appear to be seated 
in the fingers, just as if they were still connected 
with the body. 

It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that the 
localization of the pain at the surface of the body 
is an act of the mind. It is an extradition of 
that consciousness, which has its seat in the 
brain, to a definite point of the body — which 
takes place without our volition, and may give 
rise to ideas which are contrary to fact. We 
might call this extradition of consciousness a 
reflex feeling, just as we speak of a movement 
which is excited apart from., or contrary to, our 
volition, as a reflex motion. Locality is no more 
in the pin than pain is ; of the former, as of the 
latter, it is true that " its being is to be per- 
ceived," and that its existence apart from a 
thinking mind is not conceivable. 

The foregoing reasoning will be in no way 
affected, if, instead of pricking the finger, the 
* point of the pin rests gently against it, so as to 
give rise merely to a tactile sensation. The 
tactile sensation is referred outwards to the point 
touched, and seems to exist there. But it is 
certain that it is not and cannot be there really, 

160 



258 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

because the brain is the sole seat of consciousness ; 
and, further, because evidence, as strong as that 
in favour of the sensation being in the finger, can 
be brought forward in support of propositions 
which are manifestly absurd. For example, the 
hairs and nails are utterly devoid of sensibility, as 
every one knows. Nevertheless, if the ends of 
the nails or hairs are touched, ever so lightly, we 
feel that they are touched, and the sensation 
seems to be situated in the nails or hairs. Nay 
more, if a walking-stick, a yard long, is held 
firmly by the handle and the other end is touched, 
the tactile sensation, which is a state of our own 
consciousness, is unhesitatingly referred to the 
end of the stick ; and yet no one will say that it 
is there. 

Let us now suppose that, instead of one pin's 
point resting against the end of my finger, there 
are two. Each of these can be known to me, as 
we have seen, only as a state of a thinking mind, 
referred outwards, or localized. But the existence 
of these two states, somehow or other, generates 
in my mind a number of new ideas, which did not 
make their appearance when only one state was 
present. For example, I get the ideas of co-exist- 
ence, of number, of distance, and of relative place 
or direction. But all these ideas are ideas of rela- 
tions, and may be said to imply the existence of 
something which perceives those relations. If a 
tactile sensation is a state of the mind, and if 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 259 

the localization of that sensation is an act of the 
mind, how is it conceivable that a relation be- 
tween two localized sensations should exist apart 
from the mind ? It is, I confess, quite as easy 
for me to imagine that redness may exist apart 
from a visual sense, as it is to suppose that 
co-existence, number, and distance can have any 
existence apart from the mind of which they are 
ideas. 

Thus it seems clear that the existence of some, 
at any rate, of Locke's primary qualities of matter, 
such as number and extension, apart from mind, 
is as utterly unthinkable as the existence of colour 
and sound under like circumstances. 

Will the others— namely, figure, motion and 
rest, and solidity — withstand a similar criticism ? 
I think not. For all these, like the foregoing, are 
perceptions by the mind of the relations of two or 
more sensations to one another. If distance and 
place are inconceivable, in the absence of the mind 
of which they are ideas, the independent existence 
of figure, which is the limitation of distance, and of 
motion, which is change of place, must be equally 
inconceivable. Solidity requires more particular 
consideration, as it is a term applied to two very 
different things, the one of which is solidity of 
form, or geometrical solidity ; while the other is 
solidity of substance, or mechanical solidity. If 
those motor nerves of a man by which volitions 
are converted into motion were all paralysed, and 



260 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

if sensation remained only in the palm of liis 
hand (which is a conceivable case), he would 
still be able to attain to clear notions of extension, 
figure, number, and motion by attending to the 
states of consciousness which might be aroused by 
the contact of bodies with the sensory surface of 
the palm. But it does not appear that such a 
person could arrive at any conception of geomet- 
rical solidity. For that which does not come in 
contact with the sensory surface is non-existent 
for the sense of touch ; and a solid body, impressed 
upon the palm of the hand, gives rise only to the 
notion of the extension of that particular 
part of the solid which is in contact with the 
skin. 

Nor is it possible that the idea of outness (in 
the sense of discontinuity with the sentient body) 
could be attained by such a person ; for, as we 
have seen, every tactile sensation is referred to a 
point either of the natural sensory surface itself, 
or of some solid in continuity with that surface. 
Hence it would appear that the conception of the 
difference between the Ego and the non-Ego could 
not be attained by a man thus situated. His 
feelings would be his universe, and his tactile 
sensations his "mcenia mundi." Time would 
exist for him as for us, but space would have only 
two dimensions. 

But now remove the paralysis from the motor 
apparatus, and give the palm of the hand of our 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 261 

imaginary man perfect freedom to move, so as to 
be able to glide in all directions over the bodies 
with which it is in contact. Then with the Con- 
sciousness of that mobility, the notion of space of 
three dimensions — which is " Raum" or " room ' 
to move with perfect freedom- — is at once given. 
But the notion that the tactile surface itself 
moves, cannot be given by touch alone, which is 
competent to testify only to the fact of change of 
place, not to its cause. The idea of the motion 
of the tactile surface could not, in fact, be attained, 
unless the idea of change of place were accom- 
panied by some state of consciousness, which does 
not exist when the tactile surface is immoveable. 
This state of consciousness is what is termed the 
muscular sense, and its existence is very easily 
demonstrable. 

Suppose the bach of my hand to rest upon a 
table, and a sovereign to rest upon the upturned 
palm, I at once acquire a notion of extension, and 
of the limit of that extension. The impression 
made by the circular piece of gold is quite different 
from that which would be made by a triangular, 
or a square, piece of the same size, and thereby I 
arrive at the notion of figure. Moreover, if the 
sovereign slides over the palm, I acquire a distinct 
conception of change of place or motion, and of 
the direction of that motion. For as the sovereign 
slides, it affects new nerve-endings, and gives rise 
to new states of consciousness. Each of them is 



262 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

definitely and separately localized by a reflex act 
of the mind, which, at the same time, becomes 
aware of the difference between two successive 
localizations ; and therefore of change of place, 
which is motion. 

If, while the sovereign lies on the hand, the 
latter being kept quite steady, the fore-arm is 
gradually and slowly raised ; the tactile sensations, 
with all their accompaniments, remain exactly as 
they were. But, at the same time, something 
new is introduced ; namely, the sense of effort. 
If I try to discover where this sense of effort 
seems do be, I find myself somewhat perplexed at 
first ; but, if I hold the fore-arm in position long 
enough, I become aware of an obscure sense of 
fatigue, which is apparently seated either in the 
muscles of the arm, or in the integument directly 
over them. The fatigue seems to be related to 
the sense of effort, in much the same way as the 
pain which supervenes upon the original sense of 
contact, when a pin is slowly pressed against the 
skin, is related to touch. 

A little attention will show that this sense of 
effort accompanies every muscular contraction by 
which the limbs, or other parts of the body, are 
moved. By its agency the fact of their movement 
is known ; while the direction of the motion is 
given by the accompanying tactile sensations. 
And, in consequence of the incessant association 
of the muscular and the tactile sensations, they 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 263 

become so fused together that they are often con- 
founded under the same name. 

If freedom to move in all directions is the very- 
essence of that conception of space of three dimen- 
sions which we obtain by the sense of touch ; and 
if that freedom to move is really another name 
for the feeling of unopposed effort, accompanied 
by that of change of place, it is surely impossible 
to conceive of such space as having existence apart 
from that which is conscious of effort. 

But it may be said that we derive our concep- 
tion of space of three dimensions not only from 
touch, but from vision ; that if we do not feel 
things actually outside us, at any rate we see 
them. And it was exactly this difficulty which 
presented itself to Berkeley at the outset of his 
speculations. He met it, with characteristic bold- 
ness, by denying that we do see things outside us ; 
and, with no less characteristic ingenuity, by de- 
vising that " New Theory of Vision " which has 
met with wider acceptance than any of his views, 
though it has been the subject of continual con- 
troversies. 1 

In the "Principles of Human Knowledge/' 
Berkeley himself tells us how he was led to those 

1 I have not specifically alluded to the writings of Bailey, 
Mill, Abbott, and others, on this vexed question, not because I 
have failed to study them carefully, but because this is not a 
convenient occasion for controversial discussion. Those who are 
acquainted with the subject, however, will observe that the 
view I have taken agrees substantially with that of Mr. Bailey. 



264 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

opinions which he published in the "Essay to- 
wards the New Theory of Vision." 

" It will be objected that we see things actually without, or 
at a distance from us, and which consequently do not exist in 
the mind ; it being absurd that those things which are seen at 
the distance of several miles, should be as near to us as our own 
thoughts. In answer to this, I desire it may be considered 
that in a dream we do oft perceive things as existing at a great 
distance off, and yet, for all that, those things are acknowledged 
to have their existence only in the mind. 

"But for the fuller clearing of this point, it may be worth 
while to consider how it is that we perceive distance and things 
placed at a distance by sight. For that we should in truth see 
external space and bodies actually existing in it, some nearer, 
others further off, seems to carry with it some opposition to 
what hath been said of their existing nowhere without the 
mind. The consideration of this difficulty it was that gave 
birth to my " Essay towards the New Theory of Vision " which 
was published not long since, wherein it is shown that distance, 
or outness, is neither immediately of itself perceived by sight, 
nor yet apprehended, or judged of, by lines and angles or any- 
thing that hath any necessary connection with it ; but that it 
is only suggested to our thoughts by certain visible ideas and 
sensations attending vision, which, in their own nature, have 
no manner of similitude or relation either with distance or with 
things placed at a distance ; but by a connection taught us by 
experience, they come to signify and suggest them to us, after 
the same manner that words of any language suggest the ideas 
they are made to stand for ; insomuch that a man born blind 
and afterwards made to see, would not, at first sight, think the 
things he saw to be without his mind or at any distance from 
him. ,, 

The key-note of the Essay to which Berkeley 
refers in this passage is to be found in an italicized , 
paragraph of section 127 : — 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 265 

" The extensions, figures, and motions perceived by sight are 
specifically distinct from the ideas of touch called by the same 
names ; nor is there any such thing as an idea or kind of idea 
common to both senses." 

It will be observed that this proposition ex- 
pressly declares that extension, figure, and motion, 
and consequently distance, are immediately per- 
ceived by sight as well as by touch ; but that 
visual distance, extension, figure, and motion, are 
totally different in quality from the ideas of the 
same name obtained through the sense of touch. 
And other passages leave no doubt that such was 
Berkeley's meaning. Thus in the 112th section 
of the same Essay, he carefully defines the two 
kinds of distance, one visual, the other tangible : — 

" By the distance between any two points nothing more it 
meant than the number of intermediate points. If the given 
points are visible, the distance between them is marked out by 
the number of interjacent visible points ; if they are tangible, 
the distance between them is a line consisting of tangible 
points." 

Again, there are two sorts of magnitude or ex- 
tension : — 

"It has been shown that there are two sorts of objects appre- 
hended by sight, each whereof has its distinct magnitude or 
extension : the one properly tangible, i.e., to be perceived and 
measured by touch, and not immediately falling under the sense 
of seeing ; the other properly and immediately visible, by 
mediation of which the former is brought into view." — § 55. 

But how are we to reconcile these passages with 
others which will be perfectly familiar to every 



266 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

reader of the " New Theory of Vision " ? As, for 
example : — 

"It is, I think, agreed by all, that distance of itself, and 
immediately, cannot be seen." — § 2. 

" Space or distance, we have shown, is no otherwise the object 
of sight than of hearing." — § 130. 

"Distance is in its own nature imperceptible, and yet it is 
perceived by sight. It remains, therefore, that it is brought 
into view by means of some other idea, that is itself immediately 
perceived in the act of vision." — § 11. 

"Distance or external space." — § 155. 

The explanation is quite simple, and lies in the 
fact that Berkeley uses the word " distance " in 
three senses. Sometimes he employs it to denote 
visible distance, and then he restricts it to distance 
in two dimensions, or simple extension. Some- 
times he means tangible distance in two dimen- 
sions ; but most commonly he intends to signify 
tangible distance in the third dimension. And it 
is in this sense that he employs " distance " as the 
equivalent of "space." Distance in two dimen- 
sions is, for Berkeley, not space, but extension. 
By taking a pencil and interpolating the words 
" visible " and " tangible " before " distance " 
wherever the context renders them necessary, 
Berkeley's statements may be made perfectly con- 
sistent ; though he has not always extricated him- 
self from the entanglement caused by his own 
loose phraseology, which rises to a climax in the 
last ten sections of the "Theory of Vision," in 
which he endeavours to prove that a pure intelli- 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 2G7 

gence able to see, but devoid of the sense of touch, 
could have no idea of a plane figure. Thus he 
says in section 156 : — 

"All that is properly perceived by trie visual faculty amounts 
to no more than colours with their variations and different pro- 
portions of light and shade ; but the perpetual mutability and 
fleetingness of those immediate objects of sight render them 
incapable of being managed after the manner of geometrical 
figures, nor is it in any degree useful that they should. It is 
true there be divers of them perceived at once, and more of some 
and less of others ; but accurately to compute their magnitude, 
and assign precise determinate proportions between things so 
variable and inconstant, if we suppose it possible to be done, 
must yet be a very trifling and insignificant labour. " 

If, by this, Berkeley means that by vision alone, 
a straight line cannot be distinguished from a 
curved one, a circle from a square, a long line 
from a short one, a large angle from a small one, 
his position is surely absurd in itself and contra- 
dictory to his own previously cited admissions ; if 
he only means, on the other hand, that his pure 
spirit could not get very far on in his geometry, it 
may be true or not ; but it is in contradiction 
with his previous assertion, that such a pure spirit 
could never attain to know as much as the first 
elements of plane geometry. 

Another source of confusion, which arises out of 
Berkeley's insufficient exactness in the use of 
language, is to be found in what he says about 
solidity, in discussing Molyneux's problem, whether 
a man born blind and having learned to dis- 



268 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

tinguish between a cube and a sphere, could, on 
receiving his sight, tell the one from the other by 
vision. Berkeley agrees with Locke that he could 
not, and adds the following reflection : — 

"Cube, sphere, table, are words he has known applied to 
things perceivable by touch, but to things perfectly intangible- 
he never knew them applied. Those words in their wonted 
application always marked out to his mind bodies or solid things 
which were perceived by the resistance they gave. But there is 
no solidity, no resistance or protrusion perceived by sight. " 

Here " solidity ' means resistance to pressure, 
which is apprehended by the muscular sense ; but 
when in section 154 Berkeley says of his pure 
intelligence — 

" It is certain that the aforesaid intelligence could have no 
idea of a solid or quantity of three dimensions, which follows 
from its not having any idea of distance " — 

he refers to that notion of solidity which may be 
obtained by the tactile sense without the addition 
of any notion of resistance in the solid object; as, 
for example, when the finger passes lightly over 
the surface of a billiard ball. 

Yet another source of difficulty in clearly under- 
standing Berkeley arises out of his use of the word 
" outness." In speaking of touch he seems to 
employ it indifferently, both for the localization of 
a tactile sensation in the sensory surface, which 
we really obtain through touch ; and for the 
notion of corporeal separation, which is attained 
by the association of muscular and tactile sensa- 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 269 

tions. In speaking of sight, on the other hand, 
Berkeley employs " outness " to denote corporeal 
separation. 

When due allowance is made for the occasional 
looseness and ambiguity of Berkeley's terminology, 
and the accessories are weeded out of the essen- 
tial parts of his famous Essay, his views may, 1 
believe, be fairly and accurately summed up in 
the following propositions : — 

1. The sense of touch gives rise to ideas of 
extension, figure, magnitude, and motion. 

2. The sense of touch gives rise to the idea of 
" outness," in the sense of localization. 

3. The sense of touch gives rise to the idea of 
resistance, and thence to that of solidity, in the 
sense of impenetrability. 

4. The sense of touch gives rise to the idea of 
iC outness," in the sense of distance in the third 
dimension, and thence to that of space or geome- 
trical solidity. 

5. The sense of sight gives rise to ideas of ex- 
tension, of figure, magnitude, and motion. 

6. The sense of sight does not give rise to the 
idea of " outness," in the sense of distance in the 
third dimension, nor to that of geometrical solidity, 
no visual idea appearing to be without the mind, 
or at any distance off (§ § 43, 50). 

7. The sense of sight does not give rise to the 
idea of mechanical solidity. 

8. There is no likeness whatever between the 



270 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

tactile ideas called extension, figure, magnitude, 
and motion, and the visual ideas which go by the 
same names ; nor are any ideas common to the 
two senses. 

9. When we think we see objects at a distance, 
what really happens is that the visual picture 
suggests that the object seen has tangible distance ; 
we confound the strong belief in the tangible dis- 
tance of the object with actual sight of its distance. 

10. Visual ideas, therefore, constitute a kind of 
language, by which we are informed of the tactile 
ideas which will, or may, arise in us. 

Taking these propositions into consideration 
seriatim, it may be assumed that every one will 
assent to the first and second ; and that for the 
third and fourth we have only to include the 
muscular sense under the name of sense of touch, 
as Berkeley did, in order to make it quite accurate. 
Nor is it intelligible to me that any one should 
explicitly deny the truth of the fifth proposition, 
though some of Berkeley's supporters, less careful 
than himself, have done so. Indeed, it must be 
confessed that it is only grudgingly, and as it were 
against his will, that Berkeley admits that we 
obtain ideas of extension, figure, and magnitude 
by pure vision, and that he more than half re- 
tracts the admission ; while he absolutely denies 
that sight gives us any notion of outness in either 
sense of the word, and even declares that "no 
proper visual idea appears to be without the mind 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 271 

or at any distance off." By "proper visual ideas/' 
Berkeley denotes colours, and light, and shade ; 
and, therefore, he affirms that colours do not 
appear to be at any distance from us. I confess 
that this assertion appears to me to be utterly 
unaccountable. I have made endless experiments 
on this point, and by no effort of the imagination 
can I persuade myself, when looking at a colour, 
that the colour is in my mind, and not at a 
" distance off/' though of course I know perfectly 
well, as a matter of reason, that colour is subjec- 
tive. It is like looking at the sun setting, and 
trying to persuade one's self that the earth appears 
to move and not the sun, a feat I have never been 
able to accomplish. Even when the eyes are 
shut, the darkness of which one is conscious, carries 
with it the notion of outness. One looks, so to 
speak, into a dark space. Common language ex- 
presses the common experience of mankind in this 
matter. A man will say that a smell is in his nose, 
a taste is in his mouth, a singing is in his ears, a 
creeping or a warmth is in his skin ; but if he is 
jaundiced, he does not say that he has yellow in 
his eyes, but that everything looks yellow ; and if 
he is troubled with muscce volit antes, he says, not 
that he has specks in his eyes, but that he sees 
specks dancing before his eyes. In fact, it appears 
to me that it is the special peculiarity of visual 
sensations, that they invariably give rise to the 
idea of remoteness, and that Berkeley's dictum 



272 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

ought to be reversed. For I think that any one 
who interrogates his consciousness carefully will 
find that " every proper visual idea" appears to be 
without the mind and at a distance off. 

Not only does every visibile appear to be 
remote, but it has a position in external space, 
just as a tangibile appears to be superficial and to 
have a determinate position on the surface of the 
body. Every visibile, in fact, appears (approxi- 
mately) to be situated upon a line drawn from it 
to the point of the retina on which its image falls. 
It is referred outwards, in the general direction of 
the pencil of light by which it is rendered visible, 
just as, in the experiment with the stick, the tangi- 
bile is referred outwards to the end of the stick. 

It is for this reason that an object, viewed with 
both eyes, is seen single and not double. Two 
distinct images are formed, but each image is 
referred to that point at which the two optic axes 
intersect; consequently, the two images cover 
one another, and appear as completely one as any 
other two equally similar super-imposed images 
would be. 1 And it is for the same reason, that, if 
the side of the ball of the eye is pressed upon at 
any point, a spot of light appears apparently 
outside the eye, and in a region exactly opposite 
to that in which the pressure is made. 

But while it seems to me that there is no reason 

1 In the case of a near, solid, external object, such as a cube, 
this is not the whole story. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 273 

to doubt that the extradition of sensation is more 

complete in the case of the eye than in that of 

the skin, and that corporeal distinctness, and 

hence space, are directly suggested by vision, it is 

another, and a much more difficult question, 

whether the notion of geometrical solidity is 

attainable by pure vision ; that is to say, by a 

single eye, all the parts of which are immoveable. 

However this may be for an absolutely fixed eye, 

I conceive there can be no doubt in the case of an 

eye that is moveable and capable of adjustment. 

For, with the moveable eye, the muscular sense 

comes into play in exactly the same way as with 

the moveable hand ; and the notion of change of 

place, phts the sense of effort, gives rise to a 

conception of visual space, which runs exactly 

parallel with that of tangible space. When two 

moveable eyes are present, the notion of space of 

three dimensions is obtained in the same way as 

it is by the two hands, but with much greater 

precision. 1 And if, to take a case similar to one 

already assumed, we suppose a man deprived of 

every sense except vision, and of all motion except 

that of his eyes, it surely cannot be doubted that 

he would have a jaerfect conception of space ; and 

indeed a much more perfect conception than he 

who possessed touch alone without vision. But 

of course our touchless man would be devoid of 

any notion of resistance ; and hence space, for 

1 See Note C. 
161 



274 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

him, would be altogether geometrical and devoid 
of body. 

And here another curious consideration arises, 
what likeness, if any, would there be between the 
visual space of the one man, and the tangible 
space of the other ? 

Berkeley, as we have seen (in the eighth pro- 
position), declares that there is no likeness 
between the ideas given by sight and those given 
by touch ; and one cannot but agree with him, so 
long as the term ideas is restricted to mere sensa- 
tions. Obviously, there is no more likeness be- 
tween the feel of a surface and the colour of it, 
than there is between its colour and its smell. 
All simple sensations, derived from different 
senses, are incommensurable with one another, 
and only gradations of their own intensity are 
comparable. And thus, so far as the primary 
facts of sensation go, visual figure and tactile 
figure, visual magnitude and tactile magnitude, 
visual motion and tactile motion, are truly unlike, 
and have no common term. But when Berkeley 
goes further than this, and declares that there are 
no " ideas " common to the " ideas ' of touch and 
those of sight, it appears to me that he has fallen 
into a great error, and one which is the chief 
source of his paradoxes about geometry. 

Berkeley in fact employs the word " idea," in 
this instance, to denote two totallv different classes 
of feelings, or states of consciousness. For these 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 275 

may be divided into two groups : the primary 
feelings, which exist in themselves and without 
relation to any other, such as pleasure and pain, 
desire, and the simple sensations obtained through 
the sensory organs ; and the secondary feelings, 
which express those relations of primary feelings 
which are perceived by the mind ; and the exist- 
ence of which, therefore, implies the pre-existence 
of at least two of the primary feelings. Such are 
likeness and unlikeness in quality, quantity, or 
form ; succession and contemporaneity ; contiguity 
and distance : cause and effect ; motion and rest. 

Now it is quite true that there is no likeness 
between the primary feelings which are grouped 
under sight and touch ; but it appears to me 
wholly untrue, and indeed absurd, to affirm that 
there is no likeness between the secondary feelings 
which express the relations of the primary ones. 

The relation of succession perceived between 
the visible taps of a hammer, is, to my mind, 
exactly like the relation of succession between the 
tangible taps ; the unlikeness between red and 
blue is a mental phenomenon of the same order 
as the unlikeness between rough and smooth. 
Two points visibly distant are so, because one or 
more units of visible length (minima visibilia) are 
interposed between them ; and as two points 
tangibly distant are so, because one or more units 
of tangible length {minima tangibilia) are inter- 
posed between them, it is clear that the notion of 



276 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

interposition of units of sensibility, or minima 
sensibilia, is an idea common to the two. And 
whether I see a point move across the field of vision 
towards another point, or feel the like motion, the 
idea of the gradual diminution of the number of 
sensible units between the two points appears to 
me to be common to both kinds of motion. 

Hence, I conceive, that though it be true that 
there is no likeness between the primary feelings 
given by sight and those given by touch, yet there 
is a complete likeness between the secondary 
feelings aroused by each sense. 

Indeed, if it were not so, how could Logic, 
which deals with those forms of thought which 
are applicable to every kind of subject-matter, be 
possible ? How could numerical proportion be as 
true of visibilia, as of tangibilia, unless there were 
some ideas common to the two ? And to come di- 
rectly to the heart of the matter, is there any more 
difference between the relations between tangible 
sensations which we call place and direction, and 
those between visible sensations which go by the 
same name, than there is between those relations 
of tangible and visible sensations which we call 
succession ? And if there be none, why is Geo- 
metry not just as much a matter of visibilia as of 
tangibilia ? 

Moreover, as a matter of fact, it is certain that 
the muscular sense is so closely connected with 
both the visual and the tactile senses, that, by 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 277 

the ordinary laws of association, the ideas which it 
suggests must needs be common to both. 

From what has been said it will follow that the 
ninth proposition falls to the ground ; and that 
vision, combined with the muscular sensations 
produced by the movement of the eyes, gives us 
as complete a notion of corporeal separation and 
of distance in the third dimension of space, as 
touch, combined with the muscular sensations pro- 
duced by the movements of the hand, does. The 
tenth proposition seems to contain a perfectly true 
statement, but it is only half the truth. It is no 
doubt true that our visual ideas are a kind of lan- 
guage by which we are informed of the tactile 
ideas which may or will arise in us ; but this is 
true, more or less, of every sense in regard to every 
other. If I put my hand in my pocket, the tactile 
ideas which I receive prophesy quite accurately 
what I shall see — whether a bunch of keys or 
half-a-crown — when I pull it out again ; and the 
tactile ideas are, in this case, the language which 
informs me of the visual ideas which will arise. 
So with the other senses : olfactory ideas tell me 
I shall find the tactile and visual phenomena 
called violets, if I look for them ; taste, combined 
with touch, tells me that what I am tasting and 
touching with the tongue will, if I look at it, have 
the form of a clove; and hearing warns me of 
what I shall, or may, see and touch every minute 
of my life. 



278 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

But while the " New Theory of Vision " cannot 
be considered to possess much value in relation to 
the immediate object its author had in view, it 
had a vastly important influence in directing 
attention to the real complexity of many of those 
phenomena of sensation, which appear at first to 
be simple. And even if Berkeley, as I imagine, 
was quite wrong in supposing that we do not see 
space, the contrary doctrine makes quite as strongly 
for his general view, that space can be conceived 
only as something thought by a mind. 

The last of Locke's " primary qualities ' which 
remain to be considered is mechanical solidity, or 
impenetrability. But our conception of this is 
derived from the sense of resistance to our own 
effort, or active force, which we meet with in 
association with sundry tactile or visual pheno- 
mena ; and, undoubtedly, active force is incon- 
ceivable except as a state of consciousness. This 
may, sound paradoxical ; but let any one try to 
realize what he means by the mutual attraction of 
two particles, and I think he w r ill find, either, that 
he conceives them simply as moving towards one 
another at a certain rate, in which case he only 
pictures motion to himself, and leaves force aside ; 
or, that he conceives each particle to be animated 
by something like his own volition, and to be 
pulling as he would pull. And I suppose that 
this difficulty of thinking of force except as some- 
thing comparable to volition, lies at the bottom of 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 279 

Leibnitz's doctrine of monads, to say nothing of 
Schopenhauer's " Welt als Wille und Vorstellung ; " 
while the opposite difficulty of conceiving force to 
be anything like volition, drives another school of 
thinkers into the denial of any connection, save 
that of succession, between cause and effect. 

To sum up. If the materialist affirms that the 
universe and all its phenomena are resolvable into 
matter and motion, Berkeley replies, True; but 
what you call matter and motion are known to us 
only as forms of consciousness ; their being is to 
be conceived or known ; and the existence of a 
state of consciousness, apart from a thinking mind, 
is a contradiction in terms. 

I conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable. 
And therefore, if I were obliged to choose between 
absolute materialism and absolute idealism, I 
should feel compelled to accept the latter alter- 
native. Indeed, upon this point Locke does, prac- 
tically, go as far in the direction of idealism as 
Berkeley, when he admits that " the simple ideas 
we receive from sensation and reflection are the 
boundaries of our thoughts, beyond which the 
mind, whatever efforts it would make, is not able 
to advance one jot." — Book II. chap, xxiii. § 29. 

But Locke adds, "Nor can it make any dis- 
coveries when it would pry into the nature and 
hidden causes of these ideas." 

Now, from this proposition, the thorough mate- 



280 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

rialists dissent as much, on the one hand, as 
Berkeley does, upon the other hand. 

The thorough materialist asserts that there is a 
something which he calls the " substance " of 
matter ; that this something is the cause of all 
phenomena, whether material or mental ; that it is 
self-existent and eternal, and so forth. 

Berkeley, on the contrary, asserts, with equal 
confidence, that there is no substance of matter, 
but only a substance of mind, which he terms 
spirit ; that there are two kinds of spiritual sub- 
stance, the one eternal and uncreated, the sub- 
stance of the Deity, the other created, and, once 
created, naturally eternal ; that the universe, as 
known to created spirits, has no being in itself, 
but is the result of the action of the substance of 
the Deity on the substance of those spirits. 

In contradiction to which bold assertion, Locke 
affirms that we simply know nothing about sub- 
stance of any kind. 1 

"So that if any one will examine himself concerning his 
notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no 
other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not 
what support of such qualities, which are capable of producing 
simple ideas in us, which qualities are commonly called 
accidents. 

"If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein 

1 Berkeley virtually makes the same confession of ignorance, 
when he admits that we can have no idea or notion of a 
spirit {Principles of Human Knowledge, § 138) ; and the way in 
which he tries to escape the consequences of this admission, is a 
splendid example of the floundering of a mired logician. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 281 

colour or weight inheres ? he would have nothing to say but the 
solid extended parts ; and if he were demanded what is it that 
solidity and extension inhere in ? he would not be in much 
better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, urging that 
the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what 
the elephant rested on ? to which his answer was, a great 
tortoise. But being again pressed to know what gave support 
to the broad-backed tortoise ? replied, something, he knew not 
what. And thus here, as in all other cases when we use words 
without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children, 
who, being questioned what such a thing is, readily give this 
satisfactory answer, that it is something ; which in truth sig- 
nifies no more when soused, either by children or men, but that 
they know not what, and that the thing they pretend to talk and 
know of is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and are, 
so, perfectly ignorant of it and in the dark. The idea, then, 
we have, to which we give the general name substance, being 
nothing but the supposed but unknown support of those 
qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot exist sine 
re substante, without something to support them, we call that 
support substantia, which, according to the true import of the 
word, is, in plain English, standing under or upholding." 1 

I cannot but believe that the judgment of 
Locke is that which Philosophy will accept as her 
final decision. 

Suppose that a rational piano were conscious of 
sound, and of nothing else. It would be acquainted 
with a system of nature entirely composed of 
sounds, and the laws of nature would be the laws 
of melody and of harmony. It might acquire 
endless ideas of likeness and unlikeness, of 
succession, of similarity and dissimilarity, but it 

1 Locke, Human Understanding, Book II. chap, xxiii. § 2. 



282 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

could attain to no conception of space, of distance, 
or of resistance ; or of figure, or of motion. 

The piano might then reason thus : All my 
knowledge consists of sounds and the perception 
of the relations of sounds; now the being of 
sound is to be heard ; and it is inconceivable 
that the existence of the sounds I know, should 
depend upon any other existence than that of the 
mind of a hearing being. 

This would be quite as good reasoning as 
Berkeley's, and very sound and useful, so far as it 
defines the limits of the piano's faculties. But 
for all that, pianos have an existence quite apart 
from sounds, and the auditory consciousness of 
our speculative piano would be dependent, in the 
first place, on the existence of a "substance' of 
brass, wood, and iron, and, in the second, on that 
of a musician. But of neither of these condi- 
tions of the existence of his consciousness would 
the phenomena of that consciousness afford him 
the slightest hint. 

So that while it is the summit of human 
wisdom to learn the limit of our faculties, it may 
be wise to recollect that we have no more right 
to make denials, than to put forth affirmatives, 
about what lies beyond that limit. Whether 
either mind, or matter, has a " substance " or not, 
is a problem which we are incompetent to discuss ; 
and it is just as likely that the common notions 
upon the subject should be correct as any others. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 283 

Indeed, Berkeley himself makes Philonous wind 
up his discussions with Hylas, in a couple of 
sentences which aptly express this conclusion : — 



«( 



You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is 
forced upwards in a round column to a certain height, at which 
it breaks and falls back into the basin from whence it rose ; its 
ascent as well as its descent proceeding from the same uniform 
law or principle of gravitation. Just so, the same principles 
which, at first view, lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain 
point, bring men back to common sense." 



APPENDIX 

NOTE A (p. 249.). 

The horror of " Materialism " which weighs upon the minds 
of so many excellent people appears to depend, in part, upon the 
purely accidental connexion of some forms of materialistic philo- 
sophy with ethical and religious tenets by which they are 
repelled ; and, partly, on the survival of a very ancient supersti- 
tion concerning the nature of matter. 

This superstition, for the tenacious vitality of which the 
idealistic philosophers who are, more or less, disciples of Plato 
and the theologians who have been influenced by them, are 
responsible, assumes that matter is something, not merely inert 
and perishable, but essentially base and evil-natured, if not 
actively antagonistic to, at least a negative dead- weight upon, 
the good. Judging by contemporary literature, there are 
numbers of highly cultivated and indeed superior persons to 
whom the material world is altogether contemptible ; who can 
see nothing in a handful of garden soil, or a rusty nail, but 
types of the passive and the corruptible. 

To modern science, these assumptions are as much out of date 
as the equally venerable errors, that the sun goes round the 
earth every four-and-twenty hours, or that water is an elemen- 
tary body. The handful of soil is a factory thronged with 
swarms of busy workers ; the rusty nail is an aggregation of 
millions of particles, moving with inconceivable velocity in 
a dance of infinite complexity yet perfect measure ; harmonic 
with like performances throughout the solar system. If there is 
good ground for any conclusion, there is such for the belief that 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 285 

the substance of these particles has existed and will exist, that the 
energy which stirs them has persisted and will persist, without 
assignable limit, either in the past or the future. Surely, as 
Heracleitus said of his kitchen with its pots and pans, "Here 
also are the gods." Little as we have, even yet, learned of the 
material universe, that little makes for the belief that it is a 
system of unbroken order and perfect symmetry, of which the 
form incessantly changes, while the substance and the energy 
are imperishable. 

It will be understood that those who are thoroughly imbued 
with this view of what is called "matter" find it a little 
difficult to understand why that which is termed "mind" 
should give itself such airs of superiority over the twin sister ; 
to whom, so far as our planet is concerned, it might be 
hazardous to deny the right of primogeniture. 

Accepting the ordinary view of mind, it is a substance the 
properties of which are states of consciousness, on the one 
hand, and energy of the same order as that of the material 
world (or else it would not be able to affect the latter) on 
the other hand. It is admitted that chance has no more place 
in the world of mind, than it has in that of matter. Sensations, 
emotions, intellections are subject to an order, as strict and inviol- 
able as that which obtains among material things. If the order 
which obtains in the material world lays it open to the reproach 
of subjection to "blind necessity," the demonstrable existence 
of a similar order amidst the phenomena of consciousness 
(and without the belief in that fixed order, logic has no binding 
force and morals have no foundation) renders it obnoxious to the 
same condemnation. For necessity is necessity, and whether it 
is blind or sharp-eyed is nothing to the purpose. 

Even if the supposed energy of the substance of mind is 
sometimes exerted without any antecedent cause — which is the 
only intelligible sense of the popular doctrine of free-will — the 
occurrence is admittedly exceptional, and, by the nature ol 
the case, it is not susceptible of proof. Moreover, if the hypo- 
thetical substance of mind is possessed of energy, I, for my 
part, am unable to see how it is to be discriminated from the 
hypothetical substance of matter. 



286 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 

Thus, if any man think he has reason to believe that the 
"substance " of matter, to the existence of which no limit can be 
set either in time or space, is the infinite and eternal substratum 
of all actual and possible existences, which is the doctrine of 
philosophical materialism, as I understand it, I have no objec- 
tion to his holding that doctrine ; and I fail to comprehend how 
it can have the slightest influence upon any ethical or religious 
views he may please to hold. If matter is the substratum of 
any phenomena of consciousness, animal or human, then it may 
possibly be the substratum of any other such phenomena ; if 
matter is imperishable, then it must be admitted to be possible 
that some of its combinations may be indefinitely enduring, 
just as our present so-called "elements" are probably only 
compounds which have been indissoluble, in our planet, for 
millions of years. Moreover, the ultimate forms of existence 
which we distinguish in our little speck of the universe are, 
possibly, only two out of infinite varieties of existence, not only 
analogous to matter and analogous to mind, but of kinds which 
we are not competent so much as to conceive — in the midst of 
which, indeed, we might be set down, with no more notion of 
what was about us, than the worm in a flower-pot, on a London 
balcony, has of the life of the great city. 

That which I do very strongly object to is the habit, which 
a great many non-philosophical materialists unfortunately fall 
into, of forgetting all these very obvious considerations. They 
talk as if the proof that the "substance of matter'* was the 
"substance" of all things cleared up all the mysteries of 
existence. In point of fact, it leaves them exactly where they 
were. 

The philosophical Materialist who takes the trouble to com- 
prehend Berkeley finds that strict logic carries him no further 
than some such answer as this to the philosophical Idealist : 
Well, if I cannot show that you are wrong, you cannot show 
that I am ; if I should happen to be right, your proofs of the 
impossibility of knowing anything but states of consciousness 
would be as valid as they are now ; moreover, your religious and 
ethical difficulties are just as great as mine. The speculative 
game is drawn— let us get to practical work. 



THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 287 



NOTE B (p. 255). 

I am afraid this paragraph is very faulty, and indeed mis- 
leading. 

Scholastic " Realism" means the doctrine that generic con- 
ceptions have an objective existence apart from the human 
mind. Conceptualism asserts that they exist only in the 
mind ; nominalism, that general terms are mere names in- 
dicative of the similarities of objective existences. 

Locke's assertion that "motion and figure are really in the 
manna " is essentially a piece of realism in the scholastic sense. 
Berkeley would reply motion and figure are purely mental 
existences — abolish all minds, and what becomes of them ? But 
that does not make him into a conceptualist, still less into a 
nominalist ; and though he may have reached his ultimate 
position through conceptualism, his position is quite different. 

Berkeley differs from all his predecessors in affirming that the 
only substantial existence is the hypothetical substratum of 
mind or "spirit"; and that the whole phenomenal world 
consists of nothing more than affections of human (and other ?) 
spirits by the divine spirit. Pushed to its logical extreme, his 
system passes into pantheism pure and simple 

NOTE C (p. 273). 

To any one who possesses the faculty of squinting I recom- 
mend the following experiment. Take two of the ordinary 
figures of a cube, drawn for the stereoscope, and place them some 
few inches apart on a screen or wall, the proper right hand 
figure being on the left and the proper left on the right ; then 
squint so as to see the left hand figure with the right eye and 
the right with the left eye. After a little practice, there will 
suddenly appear, at the point of intersection of the lines prolong- 
ing the two optic axes, and apparently, suspended in the air, a 
figure of a cube. And this image of the cube is so real that a 
pencil held in the hand can be moved all round it, or driven 
through it. 



ON SENSATION AND THE UNITY OF 
STRUCTURE OF SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

[1879.] 

The maxim that metaphysical inquiries are barren 
of result, and that the serious occupation of the 
mind with them is a mere waste of time and 
labour, finds much favour in the eyes of the 
many persons who pride themselves on the 
possession of sound common sense ; and we 
sometimes hear it enunciated by weighty au- 
thorities, as if its natural consequence, the 
suppression of such studies, had the force of a 
moral obligation. 

In this case, however, as in some others, those 
who lay down the law seem to forget that a wise 
legislator will consider, not merely whether his 
proposed enactment is desirable, but whether 
obedience to it is possible. For, if the latter 
question is answered negatively, the former is 
surely hardly worth debate. 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 289 

Here, in fact, lies the pith of the reply to those 
who would make metaphysics contraband of 
intellect. Whether it is desirable to place a 
prohibitory duty upon philosophical speculations 
or not, it is utterly impossible to prevent the im- 
portation of them into the mind. And it is not a 
little curious to observe that those who most 
loudly profess to abstain from such commodities 
are, all the while, unconscious consumers, on a 
great scale, of one or other of their multitudinous 
disguises or adulterations. With mouths full of 
the particular kind of heavily buttered toast 
which they affect, they inveigh against the 
eating of plain bread. In truth, the attempt to 
nourish the human intellect upon a diet which 
contains no metaphysics is about as hopeful as 
that of certain Eastern sages to nourish their 
bodies without destroying life. Everybody has 
heard the story of the pitiless microscopist, who 
ruined the peace of mind of one of these mild 
enthusiasts by showing him the animals moving 
in a drop of the water with which, in the 
innocency of his heart, he slaked his thirst ; and 
the unsuspecting devotee of plain common sense 
may look for as unexpected a shock when the 
magnifier of severe logic reveals the germs, if not 
the full-grown shapes, of lively metaphysical 
postulates rampant amidst his most positive and 
matter-of-fact notions. 

By way of escape from the metaphysical Will-o'- 

- 162 



290 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

the-wisps generated in the marshes of literature 
and theology, the serious student is sometimes 
bidden to betake himself to the solid ground of 
physical science. But the fish of immortal 
memory, who threw himself out of the frying- 
pan into the fire, was not more ill advised than 
the man who seeks sanctuary from philosophical 
persecution within the walls of the observatory 
or of the laboratory. It is said that "meta- 
physics" owe their name to the fact that, in 
Aristotle's works, questions of pure philosophy 
are dealt with immediately after those of physics. 
If so, the accident is happily symbolical of the 
essential relations of things; for metaphysical 
speculation follows as closely upon physical theory 
as black care upon the horseman. 

One need but mention such fundamental, and 
indeed indispensable, conceptions of the natural 
philosopher as those of atoms and forces : or that 
of attraction considered as action at a distance ; 
or that of potential energy ; or the antinomies of 
a vacuum and a plenum; to call to mind the 
metaphysical background of physics and chemistry ; 
while, in the biological sciences, the case is still 
worse. What is an individual among the lower 
plants and animals? Are genera and species 
realities or abstractions ? Is there such a thing 
as vital force, or does the name denote a mere 
relic of metaphysical fetichism ? Is the doctrine 
of final causes legitimate or illegitimate ? These 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 291 

are a few of the metaphysical topics which are 
suggested by the most elementary study of 
biological facts. But, more than this, it may be 
truly said that the roots of every system of 
philosophy lie deep among the facts of physiology. 
No one can doubt that the organs and the 
functions of sensation are as much a part of the 
province of the physiologist, as are the organs and 
functions of motion, or those of digestion ; and yet 
it is impossible to gain an acquaintance with even 
the rudiments of the physiology of sensation 
without being led straight to one of the most 
fundamental of all metaphysical problems. In 
fact, the sensory operations have been, from 
time immemorial, the battle-ground of philoso- 
phers. 

I have more than once taken occasion to point 
out that we are indebted to Descartes, who hap- 
pened to be a physiologist as well as a philosopher, 
for the first distinct enunciation of the essential 
elements of the true theory of sensation. In 
later times, it is not to the works of the philoso- 
phers, if Hartley and James Mill are excepted, 
but to those of the physiologists, that we must 
turn for an adequate account of the sensory 
process. Haller's luminous, though summary, 
account of sensation in his admirable "Primse 
Linese," the first edition of which was printed in 
1747, offers a striking contrast to the prolixity 
and confusion of thought which pervade Reid's 



292 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

" Inquiry," of seventeen years' later date. 1 Even 
Sir William Hamilton, learned historian and 
acute critic as lie was, not only failed to appre- 
hend the philosophical bearing of long-established 
physiological truths ; but, when he affirmed that 
there is no reason to deny that the mind feels at 
the finger points, and none to assert that the 
brain is the sole organ of thought, 2 he showed 
that he had not apprehended the significance of 
the revolution commenced, two hundred years 
before his time, by Descartes, and effectively 
followed up by Haller, Hartley, and Bonnet, in 
the middle of the last century. 

In truth, the theory of sensation, except in one 

1 In justice to Reid, however, it should be stated that the 
chapters on sensation in the Essays on the Intellectual Powers 
(1785) exhibit a great improvement. He is, in fact, in advance 
of his commentator, as the note to Essay II. chap. ii. p. 248 of 
Hamilton's edition shows. 

2 Haller, amplifying Descartes, writes in the Primce Linece, 
ccclxvl— "Non est adeo obscurum sensum omnem oriri ab 
objecti sensibilis impressione in nervum quemcumque corporis 
humani, et eamdem per eum nervum ad cerebrum pervenientem 
tunc demum representari animse, quando cerebrum adtigifc. Ut 
etiam hoc falsum sit animam inproximo per sensoria nervor- 
umque ramos sentire." . . . dlvii. — "Dum ergo sentimus 
quinque diversissima entia conjunguntur : corpus quod sentimus : 
organi sensorii adfectio ab eo corpore : cerebri adfectio a sensorii 
percussione nata : in anima nata mutatio : animse denique con- 
scientia et sensationis adperceptio. " Nevertheless, Sir William 
Hamilton gravely informs his hearers: — "We have no more 
right to deny that the mind feels at the finger points, as con- 
sciousness assures us, than to assert that it thinks exclusively 
in the brain." — Lecture on Metaphysics and Logic, ii. p. 128. 

1 We have no reason whatever to doubt the report of conscious- 
ness, that we actually perceive at the external point of sensa 
tion, and that we perceive the material reality." — Ibid. p. 129. 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 293 

point, is, at the present moment, very much where 
Hartley, led by a hint of Sir Isaac Newton's, left 
it, when, a hundred and twenty years since, the 
" Observations on Man : his Frame, his Duty, and 
his Expectations," was laid before the world. 
The whole matter is put in a nutshell in the 
following passages of this notable book. 

"External objects impressed upon the senses occasion, first 
on the nerves on which they are impressed, and then on the 
brain, vibrations of the small and, as we may say, infinitesimal 
medullary particles. 

"These vibrations are motions backwards and forwards of 
the small particles ; of the same kind with the oscillations of 
pendulums and the tremblings of the particles of sounding 
bodies. They must be conceived to be exceedingly short and 
small, so as not to have the least efficacy to disturb or move the 
whole bodies of the nerves or brain. " J 

"The white medullary substance of the brain is also the 
immediate instrument by which ideas are presented to the 
mind ; or, in other words, whatever changes are made in this 
substance, corresponding changes are made in our ideas ; and 
vice versa," 2 

Hartley, like Haller, had no conception of the 
nature and functions of the grey matter of the 
brain. But, if for " white medullary substance/' 
in the latter paragraph, we substitute "grey 
cellular substance," Hartley's propositions embody 

1 Observations on Man, vol. i. p. 11. 

2 Ibid. p. 8. The speculations of Bonnet are remarkably 
similar to those of Hartley ; and they appear to have originated 
independently, though the Essai dc Psychologic (1754) is of five 
years' later date than the Observations on Man (1749). 



294 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

the most probable conclusions which are to be 
drawn from the latest investigations of physiolo- 
gists. In order to jndge how completely this is 
the case, it will be well to study some simple case 
of sensation, and, following the example of Reid 
and of James Mill, we may begin with the sense 
of smell. Suppose that I become aware of a 
musky scent, to which the name of " muskiness " 
may be given. I call this an odour, and I class it 
along with the feelings of light, colours, sounds, 
tastes, and the like, among those phenomena 
which are known as sensations. To say that I 
am aware of this phenomenon, or that I have it, 
or that it exists, are simply different modes of 
affirming the same facts. If I am asked how I 
know that it exists, I can only reply that its 
existence and my knowledge of it are one and the 
same thing ; in short, that my knowledge is 
immediate or intuitive, and, as such, is possessed 
of the highest conceivable degree of certainty. 

The pure sensation of muskiness is almost sure 
to be followed by a mental state which is not a 
sensation, but a belief, that there is somewhere, 
close at hand, a something on which the existence 
of the sensation depends. It may be a musk- 
deer, or a musk-rat, or a musk-plant, or a grain 
of dry musk, or simply a scented handkerchief ; 
but former experience leads us to believe that the 
sensation is due to the presence of one or other of 
these objects, and that it will vanish if the object 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 295 

is removed. In other words, there arises a belief 
in an external cause of the muskiness, which, in 
common language, is termed an odorous body. 

But the manner in which this belief is usually- 
put into words is strangely misleading. If we 
are dealing with a musk-plant, for example, we 
do not confine ourselves to a simple statement of 
that which we believe, and say that the musk- 
plant is the cause of the sensation called muski- 
ness ; but we say that the plant has a musky 
smell, and we speak of the odour as a quality, or 
property, inherent in the plant. And the inevit- 
able reaction of words upon thought has in this 
case become so complete, and has penetrated so 
deeply, that when an accurate statement of the 
case — namely, that muskiness, inasmuch as the 
term denotes nothing but a sensation, is a mental 
state, and has no existence except as a mental 
phenomenon — is first brought under the notice of 
common-sense folks, it is usually regarded by 
them as what they are pleased to call a mere 
metaphysical paradox and a patent example of 
useless subtlety. Yet the slightest reflection must 
suffice to convince any one possessed of sound 
reasoning faculties, that it is as absurd to suppose 
that muskiness is a quality inherent in one plant, 
as it would be to imagine that pain is a quality 
inherent in another, because we feel pain when a 
thorn pricks the finger. 

Even the common-sense philosopher, par excel- 



296 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS OEGANS 

lence, says of smell : " It appears to be a simple 
and original affection or feeling of the mind, 
altogether inexplicable and unaccountable. It is 
indeed impossible that it can be in any body : it 
is a sensation, and a sensation can only be in a 
sentient thing." l 

That which is true of muskiness is true of 
every other odour. Lavender-smell, clove-smell, 
garlic-smell, are, like " muskiness," names of 
states of consciousness, and have no existence 
except as such. But, in ordinary language, we 
speak of all these odours as if they were indepen- 
dent entities residing in lavender, cloves, and 
garlic ; and it is not without a certain struggle 
that the false metaphysic of so-called common 
sense, thus ingrained in us, is expelled. 

For the present purpose, it is unnecessary to in- 
quire into the origin of our belief in external 
bodies, or into that of the notion of causation. 
Assuming the existence of an external world, 
there is no difficulty in obtaining experimental 
proof that, as a general rule, olfactory sensations, 

1 An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of 
Common Sense, chap. ii. § 2. Reid affirms that * * it is genius, 
and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it 
with error and false theory ; " and no doubt his own lucubra- 
tions are free from the smallest taint of the impurity to which 
he objects. But, for want of something more than that sort of 
"common sense," which is very common and a little dull, the 
contemner of genius did not notice that the admission here 
made knocks so big a hole in the bottom of "common sense 
philosophy," that nothing can save it from foundering in the 
dreaded abyss of Idealism. 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 297 

are caused by odorous bodies ; and we may pass 
on to the next step of the inquiry — namely, how 
the odorous body produces the effect attributed to 
it. 

The first point to be noted here is another fact 
revealed by experience ; that the appearance of 
the sensation is governed, not only by the 
presence of the odorous substance, but by the 
condition of a certain part of our corporeal 
structure, the nose. If the nostrils are closed, the 
presence of the odorous substance does not give 
rise to the sensation ; while, when they are open, 
the sensation is intensified by the approximation 
of the odorous substance to them, and by snuffing 
up the adjacent air in such a manner as to draw 
it into the nose. On the other hand, looking at 
an odorous substance, or rubbing it on the skin, or 
holding it to the ear, does not awaken the sensa- 
tion. Thus, it can be readily established by 
experiment that the perviousness of the nasal 
passages is, in some way, essential to the sensory 
function ; in fact, that the organ of that function 
is lodged somewhere in the nasal passages. And, 
since odorous bodies give rise to their effects at 
considerable distances, the suggestion is obvious 
that something must pass from them into the 
sense organ. What is this " something," which 
plays the part of an intermediary between the 
odorous body and the sensory organ ? 

The oldest speculation about the matter dates 



298 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEKOUS ORGANS 

back to the Epicurean School and Democritus, 
and it is to be found fully stated in the fourth 
book of Lucretius. It comes to this : that the 
surfaces of bodies are constantly throwing off 
excessively attenuated films of their own sub- 
stance : and that these films, reaching the mind, 
excite the appropriate sensations in it. 

Aristotle did not admit the existence of any 
such material films, but conceived that it was the 
form of the substance, and not its matter, which 
affected sense, as a seal impresses wax, without 
losing anything in the process. While many, if 
not the majority, of the Schoolmen took up an 
intermediate position and supposed that a some- 
thing, which was not exactly either material or 
immaterial, and which they called an " intentional 
species," effected the needful communication 
between the bodily cause of sensation and the 
mind. 

But all these notions, whatever may be said for 
or against them in general, are fundamentally de- 
fective, by reason of an oversight which was 
inevitable, in the state of knowledge at the time 
in which they were promulgated. What the 
older philosophers did not know, and could not 
know, before the anatomist and the physiologist 
had done their work, is that, between the external 
object and that mind in wdiich they supposed the 
sensation to inhere, there lies a physical obstacle. 
The sense organ is not a mere passage by which 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 299 

the " tenuia simulacra reruni," or the " intentional 
species' cast off by objects, or the "forms'' of 
sensible things, pass straight to the mind ; on the 
contrary, it stands as a firm and impervious 
barrier, through which no material particle of 
the world without can make its way to the world 
within. 

Let us consider the olfactory sense organ more 
nearly. Each of the nostrils leads into a passage 
completely separated from the other by a par- 
tition, and these two passages place the nostrils in 
free communication with the back of the throat, 
so that they freely transmit the air passing to the 
lungs when the mouth is shut, as in ordinary 
breathing. The floor of each passage is flat, but 
its roof is a high arch, the crown of which is 
seated between the orbital cavities of the skull, 
which serve for the lodgment and protection of 
the eyes ; and it therefore lies behind the appar- 
ent limits of that feature which, in ordinary 
language, is called the nose. From the side walls 
of the upper and back part of these arched cham- 
bers, certain delicate plates of bone project, and 
these, as well as a considerable part of the 
partition between the two chambers, are covered 
by a fine, soft, moist membrane. It is to this 
" Schneiderian," or olfactory, membrane that 
odorous bodies must obtain direct access, if they 
are to give rise to their appropriate sensations ; 
and it is upon the relatively large surface, which 



300 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

the olfactory membrane offers, that we must seek 
for the seat of the organ of the olfactory sense. 
The only essential part of that organ consists of a 
multitude of minute rod-like bodies, set perpen- 
dicularly to the surface of the membrane, and 
forming a part of the cellular coat, or epithelium, 
which covers the olfactory membrane, as the 
epidermis covers the skin. In the case of the 
olfactory sense, there can be no doubt that the 
Democritic hypothesis, at any rate for such 
odorous substances as musk, has a good founda- 
tion. Infinitesimal particles of musk fly off from 
the surface of the odorous body ; these, becoming 
diffused through the air, are carried into the nasal 
passages, and thence into the olfactory chambers, 
where they come into contact with the filamen- 
tous extremities of the delicate olfactory 
epithelium. 

But this is not all. The "mind" is not, so to 
speak, upon the other side of the epithelium. On 
the contrary, "the inner ends of the olfactory cells 
are connected with nerve fibres, and these nerve 
fibres, passing into the cavity of the skull, at 
length end in a part of the brain, the olfactory 
sensorium. It is certain that the integrity of 
each, and the physical inter-connection of all these 
three structures, the epithelium of the sensory 
organ, the nerve fibres, and the sensorium, are 
essential conditions of ordinary sensation. That 
is to say, the air in the olfactory chambers may be 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 301 

charged with particles of musk ; but, if either the 
epithelium, or the nerve fibres, or the sensorium 
is injured, or if they are physically disconnected 
from one another, sensation will not arise. More- 
over, the epithelium may be said to be receptive, 
the nerve fibres transmissive, and the sensorium 
sensifacient. For, in the act of smelling, the 
particles of the odorous substance produce a mole- 
cular change (which Hartley was in all probability 
right in terming a vibration) in the epithelium, 
and this change being transmitted to the nerve 
fibres, passes along them with a measurable 
velocity, and, finally reaching the sensorium, is 
immediately followed by the sensation. 

Thus, modern investigation supplies a repre- 
sentative of the Epicurean " simulacra " in the vola- 
tile particles of the musk ; but it also gives us the 
stamp of the particles on the olfactory epithelium, 
without any transmission of matter, as the equiva- 
lent of the Aristotelian "form"; while, finally, 
the modes of motion of the molecules of the ol- 
factory cells, of the nerve, and of the cerebral 
sensorium, which are Hartley's vibrations, may 
stand very well for a double of the " intentional 
species " of the Schoolmen. And this last remark 
is not intended merely to suggest a fanciful 
parallel ; for, if the cause of the sensation is, as 
analogy suggests, to be sought in the mode of 
motion of the object of sense, then it is quite 
possible that the particular mode of motion of the 



302 SENSATION AND THE SENS1FEROUS ORGANS 

object is reproduced in the sensorium ; exactly as 
the diaphragm of a telephone reproduces the mode 
of motion taken up at its receiving end. In other 
words, the secondary " intentional species " may 
be, as the Schoolmen thought the primary one 
was, the last link between matter and mind. 

None the less, however, does it remain true that 
no similarity exists, nor indeed is conceivable, 
between the cause of the sensation and the sensa- 
tion. Attend as closely to the sensations of 
muskiness, or any other odour, as we will, no trace 
of extension, resistance, or motion is discernible in 
them. They have no attribute in common with 
those which we ascribe to matter ; they are, in the 
strictest sense of the words, immaterial entities. 

Thus, the most elementary study of sensation 
justifies Descartes' position, that we know more of 
mind than we do of body ; that the immaterial 
world is a firmer reality than the material. For 
the sensation " muskiness" is known immediately. 
So long as it persists, it is a part of what we call 
our thinking selves, and its existence lies beyond 
the possibility of doubt. The knowledge of an 
objective or material cause of the sensation, on 
the other hand, is mediate ; it is a belief as con- 
tradistinguished from an intuition; and it is a 
belief which, in any given instance of sensation, 
may, by possibility, be devoid of foundation. For 
odours, like other sensations, may arise from the 
occurrence of the appropriate molecular changes 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 303 

in the nerve or in the sensorium, by the operation 
of a cause distinct from the affection of the sense 
organ by an odorous body. Such " subjective ' 
sensations are as real existences as any others, and 
as distinctly suggest an external odorous object as 
their cause; but the belief thus generated is a 
delusion. And, if beliefs are properly termed 
" testimonies of consciousness," then undoubtedly 
the testimony of consciousness may be, and often 
is, untrustworthy. 

Another very important consideration arises 
out of the facts as they are now known. That 
which, in the absence of a knowledge of the phy- 
siology of sensation, we call the cause of the 
smell, and term the odorous object, is only such, 
mediately, by reason of its emitting particles 
which give rise to a mode of motion in the sense 
organ. The sense organ, again, is only a mediate 
cause by reason of its producing a molecular 
change in the nerve fibre ; while this last change 
is also only a mediate cause of sensation, depend- 
ing, as it does, upon the change which it excites 
in the sensorium. 

The sense organ, the nerve, and the sensorium, 
taken together, constitute the sensiferous appara- 
tus. They make up the thickness of the wall 
between the mind, as represented by the sensation 
" muskiness, ,, and the object, as represented by 
the particle of musk in contact with the olfactory 
epithelium. 



304 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

It will be observed that the sensiferous wall and 
the external world are of the same nature ; what- 
ever it is that constitutes them both is expressible 
in terms of matter and motion. Whatever changes 
take place in the sensiferous apparatus are con- 
tinuous with, and similar to, those which take 
place in the external world. 1 But, with the sen- 
sorium, matter and motion come to an end ; while 
phenomena of another order, or immaterial states 
of consciousness, make their appearance. How is 
the relation between the material and the im- 
material phenomena to be conceived ? This is 

1 The following diagrammatic scheme may help to elucidate 
the theory of sensation : — 



Mediate Knowledge 



-^ Immediate 

Sensiferous Apparatus Knowledge 

^ ~ ^ - 

Objects of Sense 



Receptive. Transmissive. Sensificatory 
(Sense Organ) (Nerve) (Sensorium) 



Hypothetical Substance of Matter 



Sensations and 
other States of 
Consciousness 

Hypothetical 

Substance of 

Mind 



Physical World Mental "World 



"S/~ 



Not Self Self 



*f^~. 



Non-Ego or Object Ego or Subject 

Immediate knowledge is confined to states of consciousness, or, 
in other words, to the phenomena of mind. Knowledge of the 
physical world, or of one's own body and of objects external to 
it, is a system of beliefs or judgments based on the sensations. 
The term "self " is applied not only to the series of mental 
phenomena which constitute the ego, but to the fragment of the 
physical world which is their constant concomitant. The cor- 
poreal self, therefore, is part of the non-ego ; and is objective in 
relation to the ego as subject. 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 305 

the metaphysical problem of problems, and the 
solutions which have been suggested have been 
made the corner-stones of systems of philosophy. 
Three mutually irreconcilable readings of the 
riddle have been offered. 

The first is, that an immaterial substance of 
mind exists ; and that it is affected by the mode 
of motion of the sensorium, in such a way as to 
give rise to the sensation. 

The second is, that the sensation is a direct 
effect of the mode of motion of the sensorium, 
brought about without the intervention of any sub- 
stance of mind. 

The third is, that the sensation is, neither 
directly nor indirectly, an effect of the mode of 
motion of the sensorium, but that it has an 
independent cause. Properly speaking, therefore, 
it is not an effect of the motion of the sensorium, 
but a concomitant of it. 

As none of these hypotheses is capable of even 
an approximation to demonstration, it is almost 
needless to remark that they have been severally 
held with tenacity and advocated with passion. I 
do not think it can be said of any of the three 
that it is inconceivable, or that it can be assumed 
on a priori grounds to be impossible. 

Consider the first, for example ; an immaterial 

substance is perfectly conceivable. In fact, it is 

obvious that, if we possessed no sensations but 

those of smell and hearing, we should be unable 

163 



306 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

to conceive a material substance. We might have 
a conception of time, but could have none of 
extension, or of resistance, or of motion. And 
without the three latter conceptions no idea of 
matter could be formed. Our whole knowledge 
would be limited to that of a shifting succession 
of immaterial phenomena. But if an immaterial 
substance may exist, it may have any conceivable 
properties ; and sensation may be one of them. 
All these propositions may be affirmed with 
complete dialectic safety, inasmuch as they cannot 
possibly be disproved ; but neither can a particle 
of demonstrative evidence be offered in favour 
of the existence of an immaterial substance. 

As regards the second hypothesis, it certainly is 
not inconceivable, and therefore it may be true 
that sensation is the direct effect of certain kinds 
of bodily motion. It is just as easy to suppose 
this as to suppose, on the former hypothesis, that 
bodily motion affects an immaterial substance. 
But neither is it susceptible of proof. 

And, as to the third hypothesis, since the logic 
of induction is in no case competent to prove that 
events apparently standing in the relation of 
cause and effect may not both be effects of a 
common cause — that also is as safe from refuta- 
tion, if as incapable of demonstration, as the other 
two. 

In my own opinion, neither of these speculations 
can be regarded seriously as anything but a more 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 307 

or less convenient working hypothesis. But, if I 
must choose among them, I take the " law of 
parcimony " for my guide, and select the simplest 
— namely, that the sensation is the direct effect of 
the mode of motion of the sensorium. It mav 
justly be said that this is not the slightest ex- 
planation of sensation ; but then am I really any 
the wiser, if I say that a sensation is an activity 
(of which I know nothing) of a substance of mind 
(of which also I know nothing) ? Or, if I say that 
the Deity causes the sensation to arise in my mind 
immediately after he has caused the particles of 
the sensorium to move in a certain way, is any- 
thing gained ? In truth, a sensation, as we have 
already seen, is an intuition — a part of immediate 
knowledge. As such, it is an ultimate fact and 
inexplicable ; and all that we can hope to find out 
about it, and that indeed is worth finding out, is its 
relation to other natural facts. That relation 
appears to me to be sufficiently expressed, for all 
practical purposes, by saying that sensation is the 
invariable consequent of certain changes in the sen- 
sorium — or, in other words, that, so far as we know 
the change in the sensorium is the cause of the 
sensation. 

I permit myself to imagine that the untutored, 
if noble, savage of " common sense " who has been 
misled into reading thus far, by the hope of getting 
positive solid information about sensation, giving 
way to not unnatural irritation, may here inter- 



308 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

pellate : " The upshot of all this long disquisition is 
that we are profoundly ignorant. We knew that to 
begin with, and you have merely furnished another 
example of the emptiness and uselessness of 
metaphysics." But I venture to reply, Pardon me, 
you were ignorant, but you did not know it. On 
the contrary, you thought you knew a great deal, 
and were quite satisfied with the particularly absurd 
metaphysical notions which you were pleased to 
call the teachings of common sense. You thought 
that your sensations were properties of external 
things, and had an existence outside of yourself. 
You thought that you knew more about material 
than you do about immaterial existences. And if, 
as a wise man has assured us, the knowledge of 
what we don't know is the next best thing to the 
knowledge of what we do know, this brief excursion 
into the province of philosophy has been highly 
profitable. 

Of all the dangerous mental habits, that which 
schoolboys call " cocksureness ' is probably the 
most perilous; and the inestimable value of 
metaphysical discipline is that it furnishes an 
effectual counterpoise to this evil proclivity. 
Whoso has mastered the elements of philosophy 
knows that the attribute of unquestionable cer- 
tainty appertains only to the existence of a state 
of consciousness so long as it exists ; all other 
beliefs are mere probabilities of a higher or lower 
order. Sound metaphysic is an amulet which 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS S09 

renders its possessor proof alike against the poison 
of superstition and the counter-poison of shallow 
negation ; by showing that the affirmations of the 
former and the denials of the latter alike deal with 
matters about which, for lack of evidence, nothing 
can be either affirmed or denied. 

I have dwelt at length upon the nature and 
origin of our sensations of smell, on account of the 
comparative freedom of the olfactory sense from 
the complications which are met with in most of 
the other senses. 

Sensations of taste, however, are generated in 
almost as simple a fashion as those of smell. In 
this case, the sense organ is the epithelium which 
covers the tongue and the palate : and which 
sometimes, becoming modified, gives rise to 
peculiar organs termed " gustatory bulbs," in which 
the epithelial cells elongate and assume a some- 
what rodlike form. Nerve fibres connect the sen- 
sory organ with the sensorium, and tastes or flavours 
are states of consciousness caused by the change 
of molecular state of the latter. In the case of 
the sense of touch there is often no sense organ 
distinct from the general epidermis. But many 
fishes and amphibia exhibit local modifications of 
the epidermic cells which are, sometimes, extra- 
ordinarily like the gustatory bulbs ; more com- 
monly, both in lower and higher animals, the 
effect of the contact of external bodies is intensified 



310 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

by the development of hair-like filaments, or of 
true hairs, the bases of which are in immediate 
relation with the ends of the sensory nerves. 
Every one must have noticed the extreme delicacy 
of the sensations produced by the contact of 
bodies with the ends of the hairs of the head ; and 
the " whiskers " of cats owe their functional import- 
ance to the abundant supply of nerves to the 
follicles m which their bases are lodged. What 
part, if any, the so-called " tactile corpuscles/' 
il end bulbs/' and " Pacinian bodies/' play in the 
mechanism of touch is unknown. If they are 
sense organs, they are exceptional in character, 
in so far as they do not appear to be modifications 
of the epidermis. Nothing is known respecting the 
organs of those sensations of resistance which are 
grouped under the head of the muscular sense ; 
nor of the sensations of warmth and cold ; nor 
of that very singular sensation which we call 
tickling. 

In the case of heat and cold, the organism not 
only becomes affected by external bodies, far 
more remote than those which affect the sense of 
smell ; but the Democritic hypothesis is obviously 
no longer permissible. When the direct rays of 
the sun fall upon the skin, the sensation of heat is 
certainly not caused by " attenuated films " thrown 
off from that luminary, but is due to a mode of 
motion which is transmitted to us. In Aristotelian 
phrase, it is the form without the matter of the 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 311 

sun which stamps the sense organ; and this, 
translated into modern language, means nearly 
the same thing as Hartley's vibrations. Thus we 
are prepared for what happens in the case of the 
auditory and the visual senses. For neither the 
ear, nor the eye, receives anything but the impulses 
or vibrations originated by sonorous or luminous 
bodies. Nevertheless, the receptive apparatus 
still consists of specially modified epithelial cells. 
In the labyrinth, or essential part of the ear of 
the higher animals, the free ends of these cells 
terminate in excessively delicate hair-like fila- 
ments; while, in the lower forms of auditory 
organ, its free surface is beset with delicate 
hairs like those of the surface of the body, 
and the transmissive nerves are connected with 
the bases of these hairs. Thus there is an in- 
sensible gradation in the forms of the receptive 
apparatus, from the organ of touch, on the one 
hand, to those of taste and smell ; and, on the other 
hand, to that of hearing. 

Even in the case of the most refined of all the 
sense organs, that of vision, the receptive ap- 
paratus departs but little from the general type. 
The only essential constituent of the visual sense 
organ is the retina, which forms so small a part 
of the eyes of the higher animals ; and the 
simplest eyes are nothing but portions of the 
integument, in which the cells of the epidermis 
have become converted into glassy rod-like retinal 



312 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

corpuscles. The outer ends of these are turned 
towards the light; their sides are more or less 
extensively coated with a dark pigment, and 
their inner ends are connected with the trans- 
missive nerve fibres. The light, impinging on 
these visual rods, produces a change in them which 
is communicated to the nerve fibres, and, being 
transmitted to the sensorium, gives rise to the sen- 
sation — if indeed all animals which possess eyes are 
endowed with what we understand as sensation. 

In the higher animals, a complicated apparatus 
of lenses, arranged on the principle of a camera 
obscura, serves at once to concentrate and to in- 
dividualise the pencils of light proceeding from 
external bodies. But the essential part of the 
organ of vision is still a layer of cells, which have 
the form of rods with truncated or conical ends. 
By what seems a strange anomaly, however, the 
glassy ends of these are turned not towards, but 
away from, the light: and the latter has to 
traverse the layer of nervous tissues with which 
their outer ends are connected, before it can affect 
them. Moreover, the rods and cones of the 
vertebrate retina are so deeply seated, and in 
many respects so peculiar in character, that it 
appears impossible, at first sight, that they can 
have anything to do with that epidermis of which 
gustatory and tactile and, at any rate, the lower 
forms of auditory and visual, organs are obvious 
modifications. 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 313 

Whatever be the apparent diversities among 
the sensiferous apparatuses, however, they share 
certain common characters. Each consists of a 
receptive, a transmissive, and a sensificatory 
portion. The essential part of the first is an 
epithelium, of the second, nerve fibres, of the 
third, a part of the brain ; the sensation is always 
the consequence of the mode of motion excited in 
the receptive, and sent along the transmissive, to 
the sensificatory part of the sensiferous apparatus. 
And, in all the senses, there is no likeness what- 
ever between the object of sense, which is matter 
in motion, and the sensation, which is an im- 
material phenomenon. 

On the hypothesis which appears to me to be 
the most convenient, sensation is a product of the 
sensiferous apparatus caused by certain modes of 
motion which are set up in it by impulses from 
without. The sensiferous apparatuses are, as it 
were, factories, all of which at the one end receive 
raw materials of a similar kind — namely, modes of 
motion — while, at the other, each turns out a 
special product, the feeling which constitutes the 
kind of sensation characteristic of it. 

Or, to make use of a closer comparison, each 
sensiferous apparatus is comparable to a musical- 
box wound up ; with as many tunes as there are 
separate sensations. The object of a simple sen- 
sation is the agent which presses down the stop 



314 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEKOUS ORGANS 

of one of these tunes, and the more feeble the 
agent, the more delicate must be the mobility of 
the stop. 1 

But, if this be true, if the recipient part of the 
sensiferous apparatus is in all cases, merely a me- 
chanism affected by coarser or finer kinds of 
material motion, we might expect to find that all 
sense organs are fundamentally alike, and result 
from the modification of the same morphological 
elements. And this is exactly what does result 
from all recent histological and embryological in- 
vestigations. 

It has been seen that the receptive part of the 
olfactory apparatus is a slightly modified epi- 
thelium, which lines an olfactory chamber deeply 
seated between the orbits in adult human beings. 
But, if we trace back the nasal chambers to their 
origin in the embryo, we find, that, to begin with, 
they are mere depressions of the skin of the forepart 
of the head, lined by a continuation of the general 
epidermis. These depressions become pits, and 
the pits, by the growth of the adjacent parts, 
gradually acquire the position which they finally 
occupy. The olfactory organ, therefore, is a 
specially modified part of the general integu- 
ment. 

1 "Chaque fibre est une espece de touche ou de martean 
destine a rendre un certain ton." — Bonnet, Essai de Psychologies 
chap. iv. 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 315 

The human ear would seem to present greater 
difficulties. For the essential part of the sense 
organ, in this case, is the membranous labyrinth, 
a bag of complicated form, which lies buried in the 
depths of the floor of the skull, and is surrounded 
by dense and solid bone. Here, however, recourse 
to the study of development readily unravels the 
mystery. Shortly after the time when the 
olfactory organ appears, as a depression of the 
skin on the side of the fore part of the head, the 
auditory organ appears as a similar depression on 
the side of its back part. The depression, rapidly 
deepening, becomes a small pouch ; and then, 
the communication with the exterior becoming 
shut off, the pouch is converted into a closed bag, 
the epithelial lining of which is a part of the 
genera] epidermis segregated from the rest. The 
adjacent tissues, changing first into cartilage and 
then into bone, enclose the auditory sac in a 
strong case, in which it undergoes its further 
metamorphoses ; while the drum, the ear bones, 
and the external ear, are superadded by no less 
extraordinary modifications of the adjacent parts. 
Still more marvellous is the history of the de- 
velopment of the organ of vision. In the place of 
the eye, as in that of the nose and that of the 
ear, the young embryo presents a depression of 
the general integument; but, in man and the 
higher animals, this does not give rise to the 



316 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

proper sensory organ, but only to part of the 
accessory structures concerned in vision. In fact, 
the depression, deepening and becoming converted 
into a shut sac, produces only the cornea, the 
aqueous humour, and the crystalline lens of the 
perfect eye. 

The retina is added to this by the outgrowth of 
the wall of a portion of the brain into a sort of 
bag, or sac, with a narrow neck, the convex bottom 
of which is turned outwards, or towards the 
crystalline lens. As the development of the eye 
proceeds, the convex bottom of the bag becomes 
pushed in, so that it gradually obliterates the 
cavity of the sac, the previously convex wall of 
which becomes deeply concave. The sac of the 
brain is now like a double nightcap ready for the 
head, but the place which the head would occupy 
is taken by the vitreous humour, while the layer 
of nightcap next it becomes the retina. The cells 
of this layer which lie farthest from the vitreous 
humour, or, in other words, bound the original 
cavity of the sac, are metamorphosed into the rods 
and cones. Suppose now that the sac of the 
brain could be brought back to its original form ; 
then the rods and cones would form part of the 
lining of a side pouch of the brain. But one of 
the most wonderful revelations of embryology is 
the proof of the fact that the brain itself is, at 
its' first beginning, merely an infolding of the 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEKOUS ORGANS 317 

epidermic layer of the general integument. Hence 
it follows that the rods and cones of the vertebrate 
eye are modified epidermic cells, as much as the 
crystalline cones of the insect or crustacean eye 
are ; and that the inversion of the position of the 
former in relation to light arises simply from the 
roundabout way in which the vertebrate retina is 
developed. 

Thus all the higher sense organs start from one 
foundation, and the receptive epithelium of the 
eye, or of the ear, is as much modified epidermis 
as is that of the nose. The structural unity of 
the sense organs is the morphological parallel to 
their identity of physiological function, which, as 
we have seen, is to be impressed by certain modes 
of motion ; and they are fine or coarse, in 
proportion to the delicacy or the strength 
of . the impulses by which they are to be 
affected. 

In ultimate analysis, then, it appears that a sen- 
sation is the equivalent in terms of consciousness for 
a mode of motion of the matter of the sensorium. 
But, if inquiry is pushed a stage farther, and the 
question is asked, What then do we know about 
matter and motion ? there is but one reply 
possible. All that we know about motion is that 
it is a name for certain changes in the relations of 
our visual, tactile, and muscular sensations; and 



318 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 

all that we know about matter is that it is the 
hypothetical substance of physical phenomena — - 
the assumption of the existence of which is as 
pure a piece of metaphysical speculation as is that 
of the existence of the substance of mind. 

Our sensations, our pleasures, our pains, and the 
relations of these, make up the sum total of the 
elements of positive, unquestionable knowledge. 
We call a large section of these sensations and 
their relations matter and motion ; the rest we 
term mind and thinking ; and experience shows 
that there is a certain constant order of succession 
between some of the former and some of the 
latter. 

This is all that just metaphysical criticism leaves 
of the idols set up by the spurious metaphysics of 
vulgar common sense. It is consistent either with 
pure Materialism, or with pure Idealism, but it is 
neither. For the Idealist, not content with 
declaring the truth that our knowledge is limited 
to facts of consciousness, affirms the wholly un- 
provable proposition that nothing exists beyond 
these and the substance of mind. And, on the 
other hand, the Materialist, holding by the truth 
that, for anything that appears to the contrary 
material phenomena are the causes of mental 
phenomena, asserts his unprovable dogma, that 
material phenomena and the substance of matter 
are the sole primary existences. 



SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 319 

Strike out the propositions about which neither 
controversialist does or can know anything, and 
there is nothing left for them to quarrel about. 
Make a desert of the Unknowable, and the divine 
Astrsea of philosophic peace will commence her 
blessed reign. 



END OF VOL. YI 



BRARY OF CO 




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